Key Battles:
Africa:
Second Battle of El Alamein
Operation Torch
Tunisia
Western Front:
War in the Atlantic
Flanders
Occupation of Northern France
Battle of Britain
Sicily
D-Day: Normandy Invasion
Liberation of Northern France
Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge
Rhineland
Ruhr Pocket
Po Valley
West Germany
Balkans & Eastern Front:
Poland
Yugoslavia & Greece
Operation Barbarossa
Battle of Kiev
Leningrad
Moscow
Stalingrad
Third Battle of Kharkov
Kursk: Operation Citadel
Operation Bagration
Battle of Kurland
Battle of Seelow Heights
Berlin
Pacific:
Pearl Harbor
Midway
Guadalcanal
Iwo Jima
Okinawa
Manchuria

Second Battle of El Alamein

(Oct. 23 - Nov. 4, 1942)

The greatest battle of the North African campaign came after almost two years of desert warfare, in which Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Panzerarmee Afrika had penetrated Egypt to within 60 miles of the Nile Valley. The last Axis eastward thrust had been blocked at Alam Halfa two months before. Now the initiative passed to Gen. Bernard Montgomery's rebuilt and reinforced British Eight Army. Both sides were at peak strengths. Eight Army had 200,000 men, 1,100 tanks, and artillery and air superiority. Rommel's forces, well organized behind mine fields, had 96,000 men (53,000 German, 43,000 Italian) and 500 tanks, of which 200 were German.

On the night of Oct. 23-24, under cover of an 800-gun artillery barrage, Gen. Oliver Leese's XXX Corps (51st Highland, 1st South African, 4th Indian) struck west from the village of El Alamein, spearheaded by the 9th Australian. A second attack at this point was launched the following day by Gen. Herbert Lumsden's X Corps (1st and 10th Armored, 2nd New Zealand). On the left (south), Gen. Bryan Horrocks' XIII Corps (7th Armored, 44th and 50th British) carried out secondary attacks. For seven long days the Eight Army slugged at the Axis defenses, manned chiefly by the veteran Afrika Korps - 15th and 21st Panzers and 90th Light (motorized). On two of these days, October 27 and 28, Rommel's armor counterattacked fiercely but was beaten back by the Eight Army with the help of the Royal Air Force. Then on the night of Oct. 30-31, Montgomery launched a second effort, called Operation Supercharge, that on Nov. 2 and again on Nov. 4 punched wide holes in the Axis line. British armor broke out into the open desert, squeezing Rommel out of his defensive position. The Axis withdrawal, begun the night of Nov. 4-5, continued without letup for 1,500 miles, with Montgomery cautiously but relentlessly in pursuit. The threat to the Nile Valley was wiped away. And with the Anglo-American invasion of Africa in the west on Nov. 8, Allied success in this theater was assured. The victory at El Alamein cost the Eight Army 13,500 casualties and 600 disabled tanks. German losses were 1,000 killed, 8,000 captured, and 180 tanks destroyed. Italian losses were 1,000 killed, 16,000 captured, and 120 tanks destroyed. One of the prisoners taken was Gen. Ritter von Thoma, commander of the Afrika Korps. It was one of the decisive battles of history.

Pressing against the retreating Panzerarmee, Montgomery took battle torn Tobruk on Nov. 13 and Benghazi a week later. El Agheila was captured on Nov. 23. Tripoli fell on Jan. 23, 1943, and on Feb. 13 pursued and pursuer crossed the Tunisian frontier. During this long retreat Rommel lost another 20,000 men, mostly captured. British losses were small.

Operation Torch

(Nov. 8 - Nov. 17, 1942)

The first large scale Allied counteroffensive against the Axis in World War II came in North Africa. On the east Gen. Bernard Montgomery's British Eight Army hurled back the Nazi Panzerarmee Afrika at El Alamein, beginning on Oct. 23, 1942. Then, on the west, a force of 107,000 Anglo-Americans in 650 ships invaded French Northwest Africa on Nov. 8. Called Operation Torch, it was the biggest amphibious attack in history up to that time. Under command of the American Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied forces made three landings - at Casablanca, on the west coast of Morocco, Oran, in western Algeria, and Algiers, midway along the Algerian coast.

Algiers fell first. On the evening of the invasion the French Gen. Alphonse Juin surrendered the city to the American Gen. Charles Ryder, who commanded a British force and regimental combat teams from the U.S. 9th and 34th divisions (32,000 men).

At Oran the French forces resisted the landing for two days. But on Nov. 10 the American Gen. Lloyd Fredendall's 1st Infantry and 1st Armored divisions (31,000 men) took the city's surrender.

On the Moroccan coast the French resident-general August Nogues directed a spirited opposition to the landings in the Casablanca area. French warships in the harbor fiercely engaged the American fleet protecting the invasion and lost seven ships, three submarines, and a thousand casualties. On land, the American Gen. Patton's 3rd and 9th Infantry and 2nd Armored divisions (34,000 men) consolidated their lodgments and three days later accepted the French surrender.

Meanwhile Adm. Jean Francois Darlan, the most powerful French figure in North Africa, ordered a general cease fire on Nov. 10. Originally, the Allied candidate to head the French in North Africa had been Gen. Henri Giraud, who had escaped German captivity in France. Darlan, however, commanded more strength, and on Nov. 13 he became the chief French official in Africa. On the Continent, Germany marched into unoccupied (Vichy) France upon learning of the Anglo-American invasion. Darlan was assasinated on Dec. 24, whereupon Giraud did become the top French military leader in Africa.

On the fighting front, the Algiers landing force, by prearrangement, was christened the British First Army, under command of Gen. Kenneth Anderson. This unit (in division rather than army strength) moved east to occupy Bougie on Nov. 11, Bone (by parachutists) on Nov. 12, and then crossed the frontier into Tunisia three days later. To the south an American parachute detachment occupied Tebessa, Algeria, on Nov. 15 and pushed on to reach Gafsa, in west-central Tunisia, on Nov. 17.

But the Axis had won the race for Tunisia. Protected by air forces operating from Sicily, German and Italian troops poured in by air and sea. Tunisia was beyond the range of 14 British fighter sqaudrons based at Gibraltar that had supported the Allied landings in Algeria and Morocco. By the end of November 15,000 Axis troops, including the 10th Panzer Division, and 100 tanks had taken up positions in Tunisia.

Tunisia

(Nov. 11, 1942 - May 13, 1943)

The Anglo-American invasion of French Northwest Africa on Nov. 11 provoked a quick Axis reaction in Tunisia. By air and sea, German and Italian forces poured in to seize French military and naval installations. German bombers and fighters flew into Tunisian airfields. The German Gen. Jurgen von Arnim concentrated most of the Axis strength in the northern cities of Tunis and Bizerte, which were also vital naval bases. By the end of November Arnim had 15,000 well-equipped troops, including the 10th Panzer Division. This rapid build-up thwarted the Allied aim of moving east from Algeria to take Tunisia ahead of the Axis and thus cut off the rear of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Panzerarmee Afrika, which was retreating from Libya.

In the race for Tunisia Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's Allied forces made deep penetrations before they were thrown back. On the north Gen. Kenneth Anderson's understrength British First Army reached Jefna, 32 miles southwest of Bizerte, and Tebourba, 12 miles short of Tunis, by Nov. 28. But fierce Axis counterattacks pushed the British back 20 miles in seven days. On the south the American II Corps under Gen. Lloyd Fredendall was stopped in the Sbeitla-Gafsa sector of central Tunisia. Linking the two blocked wings of the Allied force was a French corps commanded by Gen. Georges Barre.

On Dec. 24 Eisenhower ordered the Allies to assume defensive positions in front of the Axis bridgehead that extended from the coast south through Medjez-el-Bab, Ousseltia, and Faid to the Mareth Line in the southeast. To speed the organization of the Allied line, Anderson assumed command of the entire front on Jan. 24. Two weeks later Eisenhower became supreme commander of all Allied forces in Afrika, with Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, head of the British forces advancing from Libya, his deputy and commander of ground forces, newly named the 18th Army Group.

There was little fighting throughout the winter, but in February the Axis launched a sudden attack. Early in the month Rommel, in flight from the British Eight Army in Libya, had retreated behind the Mareth Line. here the German Panzers were re-equipped with the 56-ton Mark VI Tiger tanks (four inches of armor, 88-mm cannon, two heavy machine guns). On February 14 Rommel's 10th and 21st Panzer divisions of the veteran Afrika Korps lunged out of Faid toward Kasserine Pass, the gateway to the communications hub of Tebessa. Holding this vital point were elements of Fredendall's 1st Armored Division and 168th Regimental Combat Team. The inexperienced Americans were driven back 21 miles in nine days, losing 192 killed, 2,624 wounded, and 2,459 prisoners or missing. Just when the Axis thrust promised to be a major success, it was blunted by stiffened American resistance, aided by strong air support and a counterattack from the north by the British 6th Armoured. Rommel's force suffered equivalent casualties and on Feb. 22 began pulling back to its original positions. Two weeks later Gen. George patton took over command of II Corps, which was built up to include the 1st Armored, and the 1st, 9th, and 34th Infantry divisions.

The German attack at Kasserine proved to be the last successful Axis offensive in Africa. On March 26 the British Eight Army (Bernard Montgomery) breached the Mareth Line and on April 6 drove through enemy defenses at Gabes. The following day a patrol from Montgomery's 4th Indian Division met a patrol from the 9th American linking all Alexander's ground forces for the final assault in Tunisia.

Continuing their drive up the eastern coast, the Eight Army took Sfax on April 10, Sousse on April 12, and attacked the Axis positions at Enfidaville a day later. The Eight Army now fought a containing action while the main Allied thrust shifted to the north. Here the II Corps, moved up from the south and now led by Gen. Omar Bradley, formed the left (northern) flank. Gen. Patton was organizing the Seventh Army for the forthcoming invasion of Sicily. The 1st Armored of Bradley's corps fought its way into Mateur on May 3, the 9th Infantry took Bizerte four days later. To the south, armored units of the British First Army, augmented by three veteran divisions from Montgomery's army, smashed toward Tunis on May 6. The 7th Armored covered 30 miles in 36 hours to capture the city on May 7.

Three Axis divisions, trapped between Allied forces in Bizerte and Tunis, surrendered on May 9. On May 10 the British 6th Armoured raced southward across the base of the Cape Bon Peninsula. Two days later this force joined hands with the Eight Army and the XIX French Corps in the south. The hopelessly pocketed Axis forces surrendered in droves. Throughout the battle of Tunisia, the British Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder's Mediterranean air force savagely attacked Axis aircraft and troops. The American Gen. Carl Spaatz's tactical planes flew as many as 2,500 sorties in a day.

The last of some 250,000 Axis forces surrendered on May 13, including the desert-famed Afrika Korps, the Fifth Panzer Army (Von Arnim), and the First Italian Army (Giovanni Messe, who was in nominal charge of the Tunisian theater). Axis dead and wounded numbered 40,000. The British First Army suffered 23,000 casualties, the Eight Army about 10,000. American losses were 18,500, including 2,184 killed. The six-month battle of Tunisia ended the North African campaign. The Allied victory helped open the Mediterranean shipping line to the East and paved the way for an invasion of Sicily two months later.

War in the Atlantic

(1940 - 1944)

German efforts to strangle Great Britain by air and sea blockade turned the entire Atlantic Ocean into a battlefield. Nazi weapons were mines sown in British harbors and shipping lanes, long-range bombers operating from the coastline of western Europe, marauding surface raiders commanded by the German naval chieftan Adm. Erich Raeder, and the deadly submarines of Adm. Karl Doenitz' U-boat fleet.

With the fall of France, Germany intensified its Atlantic attack. From June 1, 1940, to July 1, 1941, Britain lost 899 ships totaling 4 million gross tons plus an additional 471 Allied and neutral vessels of 1.8 million tons. For 1941 Allied and neutral losses were 1,141 ships, amounting to 350,000 tons a month. This loss was three times the combined productive capacity of British and American shipyards. And sinkings were not the only naval casualties. By March 1941 more than 2.6 million tons of damaged shipping had accumulated in British ports. The high toll of Allied and neutral shipping was sharply reflected in the import of cargo into Great Britain. From more than 1.2 million tons (exclusive of oil) a week in June 1940, imports fell to a weekly average of little more than .8 million by the end of the year.

The greatest peril to Allied shipping came from the U-boats. These vessels often traveled in underwater wolf packs, guided to targets by scouting aircraft from advanced land bases. Torpedoes from submarines accounted for about one-half of all ships sunk. In 1941 German production of submarines reached 15 to 18 a month, and the total fleet had grown to 250, of which 100 were always operational.

Second only to the submarine as a destroyer of ships was the airplane, particularly the Focke-Wulf. German superiority in the air enabled bombers to destroy one-fourth of all Allied and neutral shipping lost at sea.

For attack on the surface, Germany had powerful capital ships that roamed the Atlantic as solitary killers, a threat to merchantmen, troop ships, and the smaller-gunned vessels of the Allied navies. During February and March 1941 the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sank or captured 22 ships amounting to 115,000 tons. In a five-month raid against Atlantic shipping ending in April 1941, the cruiser Scheer accounted for 16 ships totaling 93,000 tons. In all, German surface raiders sank about 700,000 tons of shipping during 1940-41.

To escort merchant ships across the Atlantic, Great Britain in July 1941 instituted the convoy system, first employed in World War I. For protection, the convoys had a variable component of Allied capital ships, destroyers, corvettes, and aircraft from small carriers and from nearby bases in Greenland, Iceland, and the British Isles. In September 1941 the first true escort carrier, H.M.S. Audacity, operating six aircraft from its flying deck, came into service.

In this life-or-death struggle on the water Britain's Royal Navy fought unflinchingly. The pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, raiding in the South Atlantic, had been damaged and forced into scuttle in December 1939. Then in May 1941 the battleship Bismark was located in the North Atlantic and sunk.

In 1942 the combined German air and sea attacks almost choked off Allied shipping in the Atlantic. Early in the year 12 to 15 of Doenitz' U-boats began striking off the coast of North America, concentrating on tankers. In January, 31 ships, totaling almost 200,000 tons, were sunk in the western Atlantic and Carribean Sea. During the months that followed, the number of sinkings in this sector grew alarmingly - May, 91 vessels totaling 452,000 tons, June, 80 ships, 416,000 tons. During the first six months of 1942, the Allies and neutrals lost a total of 900 ships totaling more than 4 million tons.

Thereafter the losses dropped sharply as a result of improved Allied tactics and equipment. There was closer cooperation between air and sea forces. Vessels were being equiped with seagoing radar, while soem merchantmen were fitted to catapult fighter planes into the air to challenge the deadly Focke-Wulfs. Convoys became stronger and more experienced, and the United States instituted coastal convoys on April 1, 1942. During the first six months of the year 14 submarines were destroyed, but in July alone another 14 were sunk and in October the number destroyed reached 16. Yet despite these losses, the number of U-boats in operation doubled in 1942 to almost 200.

A vital extension of the battle of the Atlantic was the sending of Arctic convoys, loaded with basic supplies for Russia, to Murmansk and Archangel. During 1941 and 1942, 102 British ships and 117 U.S. vessels arrived safely at the northern Russian ports with vehicles, tanks, aircraft, ammunition, and fuel. But 22 British and 42 U.S. merchantmen were lost to German air and sea attacks. Hardest hit among the convoys was P.Q. 17, which lost 23 of 34 cargo ships in June and July 1942. In all, 40 convoys carried 3,700,000 tons of cargo to Russia with a loss of 91 merchantmen and 300,000 tons of supplies.

Total losses for the Allied and neutral shipping in 1942 were 1,570 ships with 7.7 million tons plus hundreds of ships that had to be laid up for repair. Despite this heavy toll Adolf Hitler berated the German Navy and on January 30, 1943, forced Raeder to resign. Doenitz became navy supreme commander, leading to emphasis on renewed submarine attacks.

The battle of the Atlantic reached a climax in the spring of 1943. Germany put into action the greatest number of U-boats in history, 235. Ship sinkings in the Atlantic alone rose to more than 500,000 tons a month. But at the same time the Allied sea and air forces were destroying more Nazi submarines than ever before - 12 in March, 15 in April, 40 in May. The U-boat attacks began to waver under these heavy losses. In April Atlantic shipping losses dropped to 235,000 tons, in May to 206,000 tons. Doenitz then recalled most of his submarine fleet to rest, refit, and go out again in less hazardous waters. The battle with the U-boats was won. In June the total Atlantic losses fell to 28,000 tons, the lowest monthly total since 1940. In the last three months of 1943 there came two more clear signs of the Allied victory. For the first time the number of submarines destroyed exceeded the number of merchant ships sunk, 53 to 47. And new construction outstripped losses for the first time in the war. By the end of the year the Allies could show a net gain of almost 11,000,000 tons from the 14,600,000 tons of shipping built that year.

The blunting of the U-boat menace was accompanied by other successes in the air and on the surface. The ever growing Allied air strength particularly in longer-range fighter planes, sharply reduced shipping losses from Nazi bomber attack. Then, on December 26, 1943, came a notable surface victory. The German battle cruiser Scharnhorst, in an attack on the Arctic convoy off Spitsbergen, was engaged and sunk by a British force led by the 35,000-ton battleship Duke of York under command of Adm. Sir Bruce Fraser, leader of the British Home Fleet. Only 36 of the 1,970 German seamen survived. The Nazi sister ship, the Gneisenau, never recovered from damage inflicted by a mine on a run from Brest to Kiel on Feb. 11, 1942. The last remaining German heavy ship threat, the 42,000-ton Tirpitz, had already been immobilized by air attacks at various western European ports. Finally it was cornered at Tromso Fiord, Norway, where on Nov. 12, 1944, 29 British Lancasters zoomed in for a deadly attack. The battleship was destroyed and more than half of its 1,900-man crew killed, at a cost of one bomber. With this victory the long, grueling battle of the Atlantic at last drew to a close.

In all, British and American shipyards built 45,600,000 gross tons of merchant shipping in World War II. Allied and neutral losses totaled 23,500,000 tons, of which 14,000,000 were destroyed by submarines. The Axis lost 781 U-boats, more than of which (415) were accounted for by air attack.

Flanders

(May 10 - June 6, 1940)

Germany's ferocious assault on the West began with a right-wing sweep through the Netherlands and Belgium by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's Army Group B. Early on May 10, 500 German airborne troops captured two important bridges over the Albert Canal and neutralized the key defensive strong point of Fort Eben Emael. At the same time Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau's Sixth Army of 23 divisions drove through the narrow southern projection of the Netherlands and crossed the Meuse River at Maastricht. On the second day German armor outflanked the fortified city of Liege and then took it from the rear(west). The hard-pressed 17 divisions of Belgium began falling back to the Dyle River line. Here they were joined on May 13 by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of 9 divisions (Gen. Lord John Gort) and the French First Army (Gen. George Blanchard). But almost immediately the onrushing Panzers forced the Allied armies back to the Schelde River. This line too collapsed, on May 20. The entire Allied First Army Group under the French Gen. Gaston Billotte was being outmanuevered and outfought.

Meanwhile, a greater Allied disaster was in the making. Bock's smashing westward attack into the Netherlands and Belgium was only a mask for the main German effort southward in the Ardennes. Through this wooded mountainous area, considered impassable by the Allies, Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt moved his Army Group A of 44 divisions on May 10 and 11. Meeting only token opposition, the Germans pushed 70 miles to reach the French frontier on May 12. They established bridgeheads over the Meuse River at Sedan the following day. Led by Gen. Paul von Kleist's three-corps Panzer Group, the Germans turned to the west and broke through into good tank terrain. Backing up the armor was Gen. Gunther von Kluge's Fourth Army and Gen. Siegmund List's Twelfth Army. The French Ninth Army (Gen. Andre-Georges Corap), trying to block the armored avalanche, was quickly shattered and its second commander in the battle (Gen. Henri Giraud) taken prisoner. General Maxime Weygand now (May 19) replaced Gen. Maurice Gamelin as French commander in chief, but the battle was already lost for the Allies. Through a 50-mile gap in the French lines, Panzer spearheads under Gen. Heinz Guderian drove westward 220 miles in seven days to reach the coast at Abbeville on May 20-21. This armored thrust opened a 60-mile-wide corridor behind the back of the Allied left wing in Belgium. The only strong counter-thrust from the south against this corridor of steel came from Gen. Charles de Gaulle's 4th Armored Division at Montcornet between May 17 and 19. On the north Gen. Lord Gort's BEF attacked toward Arras on May 21-22. Both assaults were decisively repulsed.

Kleist's tanks now turned north along the coast to take Boulogne on May 23, and Calais on May 27. The hard-pressed Allies in the northwest were further weakened on May 28 when King Leopold III surrendered his Belgian army to the German Sixth Army and went into internment. Now evacuation by sea was the only hope of excape for the British Expeditionary Force and the remnants of the French First Army of Blanchard. The Allies fell back to their last remaining hold on the coast at Dunkirk, where the British had won temporary superiority in the air.

From May 29 to June 4, 338,000 Allied troops were evacuated to England in almost every type of naval craft imaginable. Of the 861 vessels employed 243 were sunk. Another 30,000 men were left on the blood-stained beach, dead or as prisoners. In the 26-day battle of Flanders, the Allies lost more than a million men in prisoners alone, total German casualties were 60,000. The crushing Allied defeat cost 30 French divisions (including almost all their armor in four of the lost divisions), 9 divisions of the British Expeditionary Force, and agroup of Free Poles. The door was now wide open for a fresh German onslaught into the heart of France.

Occupation of Northern France

(June 5 - June 22, 1940)

After its overwhelming triumph in Flanders, the German army quickly wheeled to the south to knife into France itself. From the coast eastward to the front of the Maginot Line and then south to Switzerland, the Nazis aligned army groups B, A, and C commanded by Field Marshals Fedor von Bock, Karl von Rundstedt, and Wilhelm von Leeb, respectively. The French commander in chief, Gen. Maxime Weygand, improvised a line running east along the Somme and Aisne rivers and thence within the Maginot fortifications. But this front was longer than the original French frontier. And it could be only weakly held by the 65 divisions that remained after the disaster in Flanders, which had cost France more than a third of its strength (plus the loss of 9 of the 11 divisions of the British Expeditionary Force).

On June 5 the Panzer led German armies, 140 divisions strong, began to grind forward irresistibly on a 100-mile front against the demoralized French. On the west, Bock's Fourth Army (Gunther von Kluge) drove to the Seine River at Rouen on June 9, while his Sixth Army (Walther von Reichenau) thrust down the Oise Valley north of Paris. With the collapse of the French Tenth Army in this sector, the Royal Navy evacuated 136,000 British and 20,000 Polish soldiers to England. In the center Rundstedt's three armies started forward on June 9. The Ninth (Maximillian von Weichs), Second (Strauss), and Twelfth (Siegmund List) were blocked briefly on and below the Aisne, but by June 12 Gen. Heinz Guderian's tanks were crossing the Marne at Chalons, while to the west, Gen. Paul von Kleist's armor was also bridging the Marne at Chateau-Thierry. When these two Panzer groups plunged forward, the French armies were hopelessly fragmented. In the west, Bock's armor raced south from the Seine to reach Cherbourg on June 18 and Brest and Nantes a day later. In the center Kleist's Panzers plunged to the Loire (at Nevers) and to Dijon on June 16 and then sped down the Rhone Valley to Lyon. To the east, Guderian's two corps of tanks struck past the rear of the Maginot Line to the Swiss border. The French abandoned their fortified positions on the night of June 14-15, allowing Leeb's First and Seventh armies to pour through into northeast France

Meanwhile, on June 11, the French government declared Paris an open city and fled to Tours, and later Bordeaux. On June 14 the Nazi Eighteenth Army under Gen. Georg von Kuechler (victors in the Netherlands and the mop-op of Dunkirk) goose-stepped into the French capital. Three days later the aged marshed Henri Petain, now premier of France, sued for peace. Earlier, on June 10, Mussolini had declared war on France and sent Italian troops toward the Riviera. The formal surrender of France took place at Compiegne on June 22.

Throughout the battle of France (as well as in the earlier fighting in Flanders and the Netherlands), the German Luftwaffe had conducted a devastating assault from the sky. Particularly effective were Hermann Goering's tactical fighters and Stuka dive bombers, which had closely supported the German ground attacks. In the five-week conquest of the West the German Army lost 27,000 killed, 111,000 wounded, and 18,000 missing. French casualties were not reported, although the Nazis claimed to have taken 1,900,000 prisoners.

The all victorious German Wehrmacht now stood supreme on the continent of Europe. Only the island of Great Britain remained in opposition. A proposed German invasion of Britain, Operation Sea Lion, appeared next on the Nazi timetable, but any conquest of Britain would first have to mean winning control of the air.

Battle of Britain

(July 10, 1940 - May 10, 1941)

Following the fall of France, only Great Britain held out against the all victorious German war machine. With his ground forces stopped at the English Channel, Adolf Hitler, attempted conquest by aerial bombardment or, failing in that, planned to destroy British naval and air defenses and thus open the way to Nazi invasion of the island (Operation Sea Lion). For this air assault Gen. Hermann Goering's German Luftwaffe, based chiefly on French and Belgian airfields, had about 2,670 planes - 1,015 bombers (Junkers, Dorniers, Heinkels), 350 dive bombers (Stukas), 930 fighters, and 375 heavy fighters (Focke-Wulfs, Messerschmitts). Opposed were about 600 Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters - Hurricanes and Spitfires - commanded by Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding. The battle - the first in history to be fought exclusively in the air - took place in three successive but over-lapping phases.

The first heavy air attack on Britain, on July 10, 1940, opened the phase of the German air offensive aimed at neutralizing the southern ports from Dover to Plymouth. This was prime invasion territory, and waves of bombers escorted by fighters roared almost daily across the Channel to blast shipping and harbor installations. The climax of this phase occured on August 15, when some 940 German aircraft attacked both southern and northern England. About 76 were shot down at a loss of 34 RAF fighters (plus 21 bombers destroyed on the ground).

Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe had launched the second phase of its offensive by stepping up attacks on airfields, aircraft factories, and radar stations in an effort to strangle the RAF. During the critical two weeks of this phase (August 24 - September 6), relentless Nazi attacks destroyed or badly damaged 466 Hurricanes and Spitfires with a loss of 103 pilots killed and 128 seriously wounded. This was one-fourth of the total pilot strength in the 50 operational RAF fighter squadrons. German losses, however, were twice as great in aircraft and even greater in pilots. On September 7 the Germans began switching their attack to the air defenses of London, with about 300 planes making the first massive daylight raid on the city. Eight days later the largest attack on London found more than 400 planes blasting the capital, 56 were shot down by RAF fighters and antiaircraft fire.

The costly September 15 raid convinced Goering that daylight attacks were futile. He then concentrated on the third (and last) phase of the battle of Britain - a nighttime blitz of the capital. This attack, which had started on September 7, was to continue unceasingly for 57 nights. During this time an average of 200 planes a night smashed at the city with high-explosive and incendiary bombs. October 15 was an especially brutal night - 480 German planes dropped 386 tons of high explosive and 70,000 incendiary bombs. British defenses consisted of six squadrons of night fighters and about 2,000 antiaircraft guns.

The repetitive, heavy raids killed more than 43,000 British and wounded five times that number, caused tremendous property damage, and curtailed war and food production. But the change to night attack made it clear that British fighter pilots in "their finest hour" had broken the back of the Luftwaffe bomber offensive and unequivocally ended Nazi invasion plans. During the four crucial months of the battle of Britain, the RAF lost 915 fighter aircraft, 481 men in killed, prisoners, or missing, and 422 wounded. German aircraft losses were 1,733, although the British claimed 2,698 kills.

Beginning on November 4, German night attacks shifted to Britain's key industrial centers. Coventry was blasted by 600 tons of high explosives from 500 aircraft on the night of November 14. Birmingham was heavily raided between November 19 and 22. London was again struck savagely on December 29, with almost 1,500 different fires started. Throughout the winter of 1940-41 German bombing attacks continued, with heavy emphasis on port cities as part of the battle of the Atlantic aimed at cutting Great Britain's lifeline. During this time British air defenses destroyed an average of 15 to 20 planes a month. In the first ten days of May alone, 70 Luftwaffe planes were shot down by ever improving defensive weapons - more antiaircraft guns (almost 500 in London alone), better radar, and the addition of rocket batteries. The last incendiary attack on London, on May 10, was the most destructive of the entire blitz. Bombers started more than 2,000 fires and killed or injured 3,000 people, at a cost of 16 planes (the most planes destroyed in a night attack throughout the blitz). But this was the Luftwaffe's last major strike in the battle of Britain - the first defeat for Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. Five weeks later virtually all Nazi military resources were thrown into the attack on the Soviet Union.

Sicily

(July 9 - Aug. 17, 1943)

The Allied clean sweep of North Africa in May 1943 opened the Mediterranean for thrusts against Sicily and the Italian mainland. The Anglo-American forces under the U.S. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower began mounting an amphibious operation (called Husky) to make the first strike at the Axis homeland. On the night of July 9-10 a fleet of 3,000 ships and landing craft approached the southern shore of Sicily carrying 14,000 vehicles, 600 tanks, 1,800 guns, and 160,000 men of the Fifteenth Army Group under the British Gen. Sir Harold Alexander. For the previous week the island had been heavily bombed by the British air marshal Arthur Tedder's Allied air force. Now elements of the British 1st Airborne and U.S. 82nd Airborne divisions parachuted in ahead of the amphibious assault, creating confusion and damage among the 350,000 Axis defenders - three German infantry and four Italian infantry divisions and six Italian coast defense divisions, all under the command of the Italian Gen. Alfred Guzzoni.

Protected by 3,680 aircraft (against an Axis total of 1,400), the Allied amphibious force hit along 100 miles of beach at dawn. The British Gen. Sir Bernard Montgomery's Eight Army landed on the southeast corner of Sicily - Gen. Miles Dempsey's XIII Corps (5th and 50th Infantry) on the right, Gen. Oliver Leese's XXX Corps (51st Infantry and 1st Canadian) on the left. To the west Gen. George Patton's U.S. Seventh Army (1st, 3rd, 45th Infantry and 2nd Armored) struck near the center of Sicily's southern coast. Both armies were supplemented by Commando or Ranger units. By nightfall all seven assault infantry divisions had carved out their assigned beach heads.

On the right the Eight Army captured the port of Syracuse on July 12 and Augusta two days later. It then drove north toward Catania, midway up the east coast. But here Axis defenses on the commanding slopes of 11,000-foot Mount Etna brought the advance to a halt. At this time German reinforcements were rushed to Sicily, with German Gen. Hube taking charge of all Nazi troops. On the left the Seventh Army captured the port of Licata on D-Day and then beat off a strong German armored attack at Gela, with the help of naval gunfire under the supreme Allied naval commander, the British admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham. The U.S. 3rd Infantry, 82nd Airborne, and 2nd Armored, forming a provisional corps under Gen. Geoffrey Keyes, then cleared the southwestern coast and drove across the island through hilly terrain to take Palermo on the north coast on July 22. Meanwhile, Gen. Omar Bradley's II Corps smashed through the center of Sicily to San Stefano. The main U.S. thrust then turned east in two drives - along the coast and 20 miles inland along the lateral Nicosia-Randazzo highway. This attack pinched the German defenses at Mount Etna, enabling the British to take Catania on August 5. Bradley's troops took Troina on August 6 and Randazzo on August 13 and raced into the key port of Messina at the northeastern end of the island on August 17. The Eight Army arrived there from the south only hours later. Meanwhile, some 40,000 German (including the crack 1st Parachute) and 60,000 Italian troops were evacuated across the narrow Strait of Messina to the mainland of Italy.

The capture of Messina ended the 38-day battle. Axis casualties totaled 167,000, of whom 37,000 were Germans. The Allies lost 31,158 in killed, wounded, and missing, of whome 11,923 were Americans. The war now stood at the threshold of Italy itself. This swelling threat, plus devastating Allied bombings, ended the Fascist regime. Benito Mussolini resigned on July 25 and was succeeded by Marshal Pietro Badoglio. But the swift German take-over of the Italian Peninsula thwarted Allied plans for a quick conquest.

D-Day: Normandy Invasion

(June 6 - July 24, 1944)

Both the Allies and Germany realized that the decisive struggle in the West must come from a U.S.-British invasion of western Europe. For two years the Allies worked on invasion plans and built up supplies and fighting strength in the United Kingdom. By May 1944, 800,000 combat troops alone (47 divisions) stood ready in the British Isles. The commander in chief was the U.S. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who directed SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces). The British Gen. Sir Bernard Montgomery commanded the ground forces for the cross-Channel attack.

The landing site, a well-guarded secret, was to be a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast from Caen westward to a beach at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula. From east to west five beaches were to be assaulted by infantry divisions: Sword (British 3rd), Juno (Canadian 3rd), Gold (British 50th), Omaha (U.S. 1st and part of 29th), and Utah (U.S. 4th). Guarding this section of the heavily fortified Atlantic Wall was the German Seventh Army of Gen. Friedrich Dollman and part of German Army Group B, commanded by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Rommel's other army - the Fifteenth, commanded by Gen. Hans von Salmuth, stood north of the Seine River. The chief German commander in the West was Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt, who had 36 infantry and 6 Panzer divisions in the coastal area facing England.

The invasion came on June 6, 1944. It was the greatest amphibious landing in history. The assaulting force was carried to Normandy by a fleet of more than 4,000 ships under command of the British Adm. Sir Bertram Ramsay. From the air, 4,900 fighter planes and 5,800 bombers under the British air chief marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory smashed at the German coastal defenses with 14,600 sorties in the first 24 hours. On the night before, the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions had parachuted behind Utah Beach to capture exits into the Cotentin Peninsula. The British 6th Airborne had dropped at the east boundary of Sword Beach to seize bridges over the Orne River and the Caen Canal, in order to protect the left flank. At dawn the first infantry waves of Operation Overlord fought their way ashore through prepared defenses in the face of heavy German fire. Supported by naval bombardment and close air support, the sea-borne assault clawed out five beachheads by nightfall of D-Day. On the left (east) the three landings of Gen. Miles Dempsey's Second British Army stood secure. At Gen. Omar Bradley's U.S. Fifth Army front, the 1st Division hold on Omaha beach was precarious, but the Utah force had pushed inland five miles. Allied casualties totaled 11,000, including 2,500 dead, far less than had been feared.

During the next six days the invading forces linked up their beachheads to form a lodgment 80 miles long and ran an average of 10 miles deep. At the same time, eight more combat divisions landed and the success of the invasion was assured. Caught by surprise, the top German commanders reacted slowly, they feared that the main landing was still to come farther north in the Pais-de-Calais area. So scared were the German commanders that they did not dare wake a sleeping Adolf Hitler with the bad news of the successful invasion.

On the left flank of the beachhead strong German Panzer units held the British Second Army out of Caen for weeks. On the right three corps of the U.S. First Army defended the perimeter from Caumont to Carentan. North of carentan, Gen. J. Lawton Collin's VII Corps thrust westward across the base of the Cotentin Peninsula. After five days of violent fighting through hedgerows, the Americans reached the Atlantic coast on June 18. Turning north, the 9th, 79th, and 4th Infantry divisions reached the outer defenses of Cherbourg in two days. A six-day attack, from June 22 to 27, finally forced the surrender of the stubborn Nazi garrison. Although German demolitions severly wrecked unloading piers, the Allies soon had a major port to help supply the rapidly swelling forces in the Normandy beachhead. Cherbourg beaches came into use on July 16, piers on August 7.

Elsewhere the battle of Normandy became a slug-fest. The Allies poured in men and supplies, seeking to build up strength to break out of the lodgement. The Germans rushed up reinforcements, particularly Panzer units, in a desperate effort to contain the beachhead. On June 28 the German Seventh Army commander, Dollman, was killed and replaced by SS Gen. Paul Hausser. Then on July 3 Hitler relieved Von Rundstedt. Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, who had won success on the Eastern Front, became chief commander in the West.

On July 3 the U.S. First Army launched a southward attack that spread across most of its front. But the Germans fought back fiercely and only limited gains were achieved. The U.S. force took Lessay, in oredr to anchor the right flank, and Saint-Lo, near the center of the American sector, fell on July 18. The five divisions attacking this town suffered 11,000 casualties in 12 days. Meanwhile on the left, the British Second Army finally captured the part of Caen west of the Orne River on July 8. A second attack carried through the town to the south on July 20. Although the beachhead forces now held only about one-fifth of the area assigned to them, by July 24 they were ready to try for a major breakthrough. The first 48 days of fighting in France cost the Allies 122,000 casualties. German losses numbered 117,000.

Liberation of Northern France

(1944)

The Allied victory in the Falaise-Argentan Pocket and U.S. Gen. George Patton's racing armored columns farther east made the battle for Northern France a pursuit of retreating German forces. Allied plans called for trapping and annihilating as many Nazis as possible south of the Seine. This river proved to be a considerable obstacle to the fleeing forces of Field Marshal Walther Model because all its bridges had been destroyed by British and American aircraft.

With his right flank based on the Loire, Patton's Third Army swept past Le Mans on August 14. Three corps then raced northeast toward the Seine on either side of Paris. On August 16 Dreux and Orleans were liberated, Chartres fell on August 18. The XV Corps seized a bridge over the Seine at Mantes, west of Paris, the following day. During the next six days the XV and XII Corps crossed the Seine in force southeast of Paris. On August 23 Free French began an uprising in the capital city. Hurrying to their assistance, the French 2nd Armored Division (Gen. Jacques Leclerq) of the U.S. V Corps entered Paris on August 24. The former German conquerors were driven out 24 hours later. Gen. Charles de Gaulle set up French headquarters in Paris the same day.

Meanwhile on the Allied left, three armies had wheeled to the northeast and were advancing steadily toward the Seine. From the coast inland, they were the Canadian First (Henry Crerar), British Second (Miles Dempsey), and U.S. First (Courtney Hodges). The German units in front of these powerful forces were sent reeling across northern France. Only about 120 German tanks escaped across the Seine.

On the left of the Allied lines, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's Twenty-First Army Group drove forward into the Low Countries. The Canadian First Army swept past the channel ports, which were mopped up between September 1 and 30, to reach Bruges, Belgium, on September 9. On the right of the Canadians, the British First Army took Amiens on August 31 (capturing the German army commander Hans Eberback), Brussels on September 3, and Antwerp the following day. Although the Germans had abandoned Antwerp, they clung to the Schelde estuary and therby blocked use of the port.

Gen. Omar Bradley's Twelfth Army Group made equally good progress on the right side of the Allied line. The U.S. First Army pocketed 25,000 prisoners at Mons on September 3 and then drove into Namur, Liege, and Luxembourg, from September 5 to 10. On the right the U.S. Third Army raced through Reims at Chalons to take Verdun on September 1 and cross the Moselle west of Nancy six days later. On September 11 the U.S. Seventh Army (Alexander Patch), driving up the Rhone Valley, linked up with Patton's forces and entered the Allied line north of Switzerland. Far behind the advance to the German border, the U.S. Gen. William Simpson's new Ninth Army began the reduction of the German-held ports in Brittany.

Now, however, the Allied advance slowed because of ever-lengthening supply lines and increased German resistance as the Nazi armies fell back on their famed Siegfried Line, or Westwall. Before this battle began, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower had moved SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces) to the Continent for direct control of operations. Four days later (September 5) Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt was reisntated as top German commander of the Western Front. Nazi losses in France since D-Day totaled 530,000.

Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge

(Dec. 16, 1944 - Jan. 25, 1945)

In the fall of 1944 the stubborn Nazi defense of the Siegfried Line allowed the German armies some time to reorganize. Hitler then ordered Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt to launch a major counteroffensive, aimed at recapturing Liege and Antwerp and thus cutting in two Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's Allied Forces stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland. The second German objective was the destruction of the four Allied armies north of the line Bastogne - Brussles - Antwerp: the Canadian First, British Second, U.S. Ninth, and most of U.S. First. Hitler chose the Ardennes (site of his spectacular 1940 breakthrough) as the point of attack. Here Gen. Troy Middleton's U.S. VIII Corps was thinly spread across a 75-mile front from Monschau south to Echternach.

Hidden by dense fog, the Nazi attack (Operation Watch on the Rhine) began early on December 16. Schutzstaffel (SS) Gen. Sepp Dietrich's Sixth Panzer Army was charged with the main thrust, supported on the left by the Fifth Panzer (Hasso von Manteuffel) and the Seventh (Ernst Bradenberger) armies. The massive assault by 20 divisions caught the Americans by surprise and sent the 28th and 106th Infantry and 9th Armored divisions reeling back in disarray. A special Nazi unit (under Col. Otto Skorzeny) disguised as Americans penetrated the rear, disrupting communications and transportation. They spoke perfect english and once caught they were to say that thousands of German SS soldiers had infiltrated dressed as American soldiers in a special mission. This slowed American movement because now every soldier was stopped at checkpoints and asked American questions to see if he was a real American. Thousands were arrested because they did not know the height of the Empire State building for example. However, under the Geneva Convention, German soldiers in American uniforms were not protected and thus any caught was executed on the spot. The Germans were forced to abandon this successful mission because of the American executions.

Adding to the Allied confusion was a parachute drop of 1,000 men under Col. Friedrich von der Heydte near Malmedy. This unit attempted to block off Allied reinforcements coming into the Ardennes from the north.

The sudden German thrust drove a bulge in the First Army (Courtney Hodges) line. But on the north shoulder Gen. Leonard Gerow's V Corps quickly organized a stout defense that deflected the main axis of the Sixth Panzer Army's attack southward. Here again, the Nazis were held up from December 17 to 23 by a sturdy roadblock thrown up by the U.S. 7th Armored Division at Saint-Vith. On this northern shoulder of the attack 125 American prisoners were executed after they surrendered to SS troops near malmedy on December 17. For actions like these Allied soldiers had little sympathy for surrending SS troops. At Dachau, for instance, some 500-600 SS troops surrenderd. They were all lined up against a wall and fired upon with machine guns by American troops. Afterwards any survivors were finished off with pistol fire or with shovels or metal bars. Herman Goering at Nuremberg asked that Gen. D. Eisenhower should be here on trial also since he gave the order to execute 200 German soldiers for every American POW executed.

Slowed down in the north, Field Marshal Walter Model, in direct command of the offensive, then switched the major German effort to the Fifth Panzer Army. Racing westward, Manteuffel's armor reached Bastogne on December 20. To hold this vital road junction, the U.S. 101st Airborne had been huried forward from reserve to join part of the 10th Armored and other command fragments. Under Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, a tough Allied defensive perimeter threw back the Nazi attacks. Unable to break into Bastogne, German infantry surrounded the town while Pnazer units drove around it and continued toward the Meuse. Farther south, the German Seventh Army made but little progress. On December 20 Eisenhower placed all American forces in the northern half of the bulge under the temporary command of the British field marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery. At the same time Gen. George Patton's Third Army was oredered to turn north to attack the southern flank of the German wedge.

During the first week of the battle, Allied air power had been immobilized by bad weather. On December 23, however, clearer skies brought British and U.S. planes into the fray, attacking German columns and supplying encircled Bastogne by air. Two days later, near Celles, the U.S. 2nd Armored Division (Ernst Harmon) struck the 2nd Panzer at the western tip of the Ardennes bulge. A decisive two day battle bent back the Nazi spearhead, 60 miles from the starting line. Thirty-five miles to the southeast, patton's 4th Armored Division punched a narrow corridor into beliguered Bastogne (December 26), where McAuliffe had ridiculed an earlier German surrender proposal by replying "Nuts." The whirwind Nazi offensive had now been stopped, but the long, costly elimination of the bulge into the Allied line still lay ahead.

On the southern flank of the Ardennes three Third Army corps fought off fierce German attempts to cut the corridor into Bastogne and slowly pressed northward. On the northwest and northern faces of the bulge, Montgomery stabilized his front and then attacked on January 3 with the British XXX Corps (Bryan Horrocks) and the U.S. VII (Lawton Collins). On January 8 Model began a skillful, fighting retreat that successfully pulled back every major German unit. British and American patrols made contact near Sain-Hubert on January 13, and three days later a solid front was re-established when the U.S. 2nd (from the north) and 11th (from the south) Armored divisions linked up at Houffalize. The First Army, but not the Ninth, then came again under control of Gen. Omar Bradley's Twelfth Army Group. By January 25 the original front had been restored.

Meanwhile, to the south in Alsace-Lorraine, the German First Army (Gen. Obstfelder) had launched an attack on January 1 toward the Laverne Gap. Here Gen. Jacob Devers' Sixth Army Group had been forced to cover the hole left by the shift of Third Army troops to the Ardennes. Although the Nazi attack gained ground initially, Gen. Alexander Patch's U.S. Seventh Army retained its organization and held firm behind the Moder River on January 20. Still farther south, Gen. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny's First French Army, reinforced by four U.S. divisions, pinched off the Colmar Pocket west of the Rhine between January 20 and February 9.

With the end of this secondary fighting along the upper Rhine, the battle of the Ardennes came to a close. Hitler's daring gamble cost the Germans almost 200,000 casualties, 600 tanks and assault guns, and more than 1,500 aircraft. German generals argued against the offensive opting instead to send much needed tanks and troops to the Eastern Front where they had a better chance of defeating the Red Army. The Allies lost about 60,000 men in killed, wounded, and missing. The Ardennes battle delayed the Allied offensive toward the Rhine by six weeks. But the destruction of virtually all Nazi reserve strength helped ensure the final defeat of Germany.

Rhineland

(Feb. 8 - Mar. 24, 1945)

Before the last of the German attackers had been driven out of Ardennes bulge, the Allies had resumed their offensive against the Siegfried Line. Progress was so slow, however, that a large-scale effort became necessary to effect a breakthrough to the Rhine Valley.

On February 8 the Canadian First Army (Henry Crerrar) launched Operation Veritable, a major attack southeast from Nijmegen, Holland, between the meuse and the Rhine. The latter was reached on Feb. 14. A converging thrust by the U.S. Ninth Army (William Simpson), called Operation Grenade, crossed the Roer River on Feb. 23. The two advances linked up at Geldern, Germany, on March 3. Two days later the Allies had pressed to the Rhine from opposite Dusseldorf northward, leaving only a small German bridgehead at Xanten-Wesel. The Canadians eliminated this pocket on March 10. Meanwhile, to the south, the left wing of the U.S. First Army (Courtney Hodges) attacked toward Cologne on Feb. 23 to cover the Ninth Army's right flank. This offensive swept across the Rhine plain, while the U.S. Third Army of Gen. George Patton punched its way through the Siegfried Line north of the Moselle River.

On the central front the rest of the First Army and the Third Army, both under the group command of Gen. Omar Bradley, launched a broad attack on March 5 toward the middle Rhine (Operation Lumberjack). By March 10 the Americans had closed to the river from Coblenz northward through Bonn and Cologne (which fell March 7), to link up with the Canadians at Wesel.

The rapid advance to the Rhine yielded a surprising and rich dividend. On March 7 the U.S. 9th Armored Division discovered the railroad bridge at Remagen still standing. It was the only Rhine bridge not demolished by the Germans. In a daring gamble, leading elements dashed across the Rhine and seized a bridgehead on the east bank. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme Allied commander in Europe, ordered the new breakthrough hurriedly reinforced. Despite German counterattacks and determined efforts to wreck the bridge, Hodges rushes three corps (III, V, VII) across the river by bridge, pontoon, and ferry. By March 21 the bridgehead had grown to 20 miles long and 8 miles deep. The Remagen success caused the Allies to shift the main axis of their attack from Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's northern group of armies to Bradley's central force.

During the Remagen bridgehead build-up, the U.S. Gen. Jacob Devers' Sixth Army Group launched its own advance to the Rhine (Operation Undertone). It the took the form of a huge pincers movement against SS Gen. Paul Hausser's Seventh and First German armies. On March 15 the right wing of Patton's Third Army attacked south across the Moselle River into the Saar. Two days later Gen. Alexander Patch's U.S. Seventh Army began hammering through the Siegfried Line, headed northeast. By March 21 the joint U.S. offensive had crushed all german opposition west of the Rhine except for a shrinking foothold around Landau. Then on March 22 Patton's 5th Infantry Division wheeled from south to east and plunged across the Rhine at Oppenheim. Encouraged by light opposition in this area, the VIII Corps bridged the river at Boppard, 40 miles to the north, on March 24. Germany's last natural defensive barrier had now been breached in three places on Bradley's front.

The Rhineland battle inflicted a major defeat on three Nazi army groups - Johannes Blaskowitz in the north, Walther Model in the center, and Hausser in the south. Some 60,000 Germans were killed or wounded and almost 250,000 captured. This heavy toll, plus the loss of much heavy equipment, ruined the Nazi chances of holding the Allied armies at the Rhine. Americans killed in action totaled 6,570, British and Canadian losses were markedly lower.

Ruhr Pocket

(April 1 - 18, 1945)

One of the prime Allied objectives in their sweep across western Germany was the industrial center of the Ruhr, along the middle Rhine. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's forces closed to the Rhine in March 1945. The mission of holding the west bank opposite the Ruhr, from Bonn north to Duisburg, was then assigned to the U.S. Fifteenth Army (Leonard Gerow). Fifteen miles south of Bonn, Gen. Courtney Hodges' U.S. First Army struck east from its Remagen bridgehead on March 25. Reaching Marburg three days later, the VII Corps suddenly wheeled north toward Lippstadt. Meanwhile, along the north side of the Ruhr, the XIX Corps of Gen. William Simpson's Ninth Army was driving up the Lippe River, also headed for Lippstadt. On April 1 the two American columns, the Ninth's 2nd Armored Division and the First's 3rd Armored Division linked up, encircling the Ruhr.

Trapped inside the pocket of some 4,000 square miles was Field Marshal Walther Model with most of his Fifth Panzer and Fifteenth armies, plus an additional 100,000 miscellaneous troops. Unable to break out, the Nazis nevertheless resisted fiercely, hoping to slow down the main Allied offensive. But the U.S. Gen. Omar Bradley, now directing both the Ninth and First armies, ordered the eastward drive continued, leaving only two corps from each army to reduce the pocket. In the north Simpson's XVI and XIX (in part) corps pressed inward toward the Ruhr River. Hodges' III and XVIII Corps hammered at the eastern and southern sides. By April 14 the shrinking pocket had been split in two by a north-south attack. During the next four days German troops began to surrender wholesale, while Model reportedly committed suicide. Resistance ended on April 18 with the final capitulation of 317,000 prisoners, including 30 generals. The greatest Nazi mass surrender of World War II took place on the Western Front and was achieved by the American forces.

Po Valley

(Apr. 9 - 29, 1945)

After a five month winter stalemate on the Italian front, the U.S. Gen. Mark Clark's Fifteenth Army Group stood ready to resume the offensive against Gen. Heinrich Vietinghoff-Scheel's German Tenth and Fourteenth armies. The Allied plan was to break through the mountainous heights of the Gothic Line and destroy the German forces on the plains south of the Po River.

The offensive opened on April 9 with a three corps attack by the British Eight Army on the east (Adriatic) flank. Despite stubborn German resistance, Gen. Richard McCreery's Eight Army V Corps fought its way up Highway 16 into the Argenta Gap on the right, while the Polish II Corps on the left captured Imola, on the road to Bologna, on April 14. The same day Gen. Lucian Truscott's U.S. Fifth Army took up the attack, the II Corps driving north toward Bologna while the IV Corps struck west of the city. The 92nd Infantry Division held the long front stretching westward to the Ligurian Sea. Led by the 10th Mountain Division, the Americans broke into open country northwest of Bologna on April 20. The half-encircled city fell to the Poles the next day.

Both Allied armies now raced northward, trapping thousands of Germans in the rear. On April 23 the U.S. 10th Mountain forced the Po southeast of Mantua. As other Allied units closed up to the river, the two German armies fled across the Po. Under devastating air attack, Vietinghoff-Scheel's forces lost most of their heavy equipment. North of the Po the pursuit became a rout as Allied columns knifed northward toward the foothills of the Alps. Behind the collapsing German front Italian partisans rose up. They seized control in Genoa, Milan, and Venice. On April 28 one partisan band captured and executed the erstwhile Italian dictator Mussolini and his mistress.

The Fifth Army entered Verona on April 26 and Milan three days later. On the right, the Eight Army, driving around the head of the Adriatic, linked up with Titos' Yugoslav partisans on May 1. Meanwhile Vietinghoff-Scheel had formalized the wholsale German capitulations. On April 29 he had unconditionally surrendered the German forces in Italy to Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, effective May 2. Almost 1,000,0000 Germans troops laid down their arms, ending the 20-month Allied campaign in Italy. It was the first of the large-scale Nazi surrenders, between May 2 and 8, 1945, that ended the war in Europe.

Although Italy was always a secondary theater in World War II, it drained away vital German strength that could have been used to win on the Eastern Front, much as the fighting in Spain had sapped the French Empire of Napoleon 135 years earlier. In all, Allied casualties in Italy numbered almost 350,000. The German total of killed, wounded, and missing was over 400,000 in addition to over 1,000,000 captured.

West Germany

(Mar. 25 - May 8, 1945)

Following the decisive Allied victory in the Rhineland, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander in the west, regrouped his forces for a final assault into the German heartland. For this offensive he had 85 divisions along the Rhine, divided into seven armies and three army groups. In the north, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery commanded the Canadian First (Henry Crerrar), British Second (Miles Dempsey), and U.S. Ninth (Henry Simpson). Gen. Omar Bradley's central army group consisted of the U.S. First (Courtney Hodges) and U.S. Third (George Patton). In the south, Gen. Jacob Devers directed the U.S. Seventh (Alexander Patch) and French First (Jean de Lattre de Tassigny). The Allies had almost complete air supremacy, both strategic and tactical.

Against this mighty array, the German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring could muster only 60 divisions, so decimated that the total number of Nazi troops equaled about 26 full-strength divisions. Ammunition, fuel, and other supplies were scarce and difficult to distribute under the watchful eyes of Allied airmen. The chief German strength lay in fanaticism of some units, such as the SS, and in the fact that they were defending their familiar ground of their homeland. Hitler stood ready to relieve the responsible commander each time a crisis occured.

In the north the British Second Army plunged across the Rhine at Wesel on March 23. The U.S. Ninth began crossing on the right the following day. Aided by a drop of the U.S. 17th and British 6th Airborne divisions, the Allied forces pressed eastward and on March 28, near Haltern, broke out on the North German Plain. Simpson's Ninth then drove along the northern edge of the Ruhr toward Lippstadt.

On the central Rhine both the First and Third armies erupted from their bridgeheads east of the river on March 25. Hodges' forces attacked eastward to reach Marburg on March 28 and then turned north toward Lippstadt. On the right Patton raced through Frankfurt and headed northeast toward Kassel. Farther south, Patch's Seventh Army forced the Rhine at Worms on March 26 and captured Mannheim three days later. The French First Army crossed at Philippsburg on April 1.

On March 28 Eisenhower oredered Bradley's Twelfth Army Group to make the main Allied effort on a three-army front along the axis Kassel-Muhlhausen-Leipzig. The Ninth Army reverted to Bradley's control on April 1. Montgomery's armies were ordered to cover the left flank by attacking through the Netherlands and northern Germany. Devers' Sixth Army Group had the mission of protecting the right flank in southern Germany.

First and Third Army armor now plunged northeast, averaging 30 miles a day. On April 1 Hodges' left wing linked up with Simpson's Ninth Army near Lippstadt. The industrially rich Ruhr was thus encircled. Leaving troops to hold the northern face of the pocket, Simpson drove eastward, took Hannover on April 9 and, after a vicious fight at Magdeburg, reached the Elbe on April 11. On his right Hodges' First Army cleaned out an SS unit at Paderborn, captured Kassel on April 2, and, driving forward, took Leipzig on April 19. Six days later a 69th Infantry patrol from the V Corps met a Russian spearhead at Torgau on the Elbe. The Western and Eastern fronts had linked up, shattering Kesselring's defenses and cutting Germany in two.

Meanwhile, the left wing of Patton's Third Army raced eastward to take Muhlhausen on April 4 and cross the Czechoslovakian border on April 17. This advance was halted at Pilsen by Allied directive. Patton's right wing turned south, thrust across the Danube at Ingolstadt on April 25, and plunged into Austria to Linz on May 4.

To the southwest, Patch's Seventh Army cleared Nurnberg on April 20, Stuttgart on April 23, crossed the upper Danube, and took the surrender of Munich on April 30. Berchtesgaden and Salzburg, Austria, fell on May 4. That same day Patch's right wing moved through the Brenner Pass to meet the U.S. Fifth Army advancing northward from Italy. At the extreme southern end of the Allied line, De Tassigny's French First Army took Karlsruhe on April 4, cleared the Black Forest, and pressed southeast along the swiss border. On May 5 German forces on the Southern Front capitulated, erasing Allied fears of a guerrilla holdout in a Bavarian redoubt.

At the northern end of the Allied line Montgomery's armies also advanced rapidly. Crerar's Canadian First Army moved north toward Emden and Wilhelmshaven to cut off Gen. Johannes Blaskowitz' German troops in Holland. To the right Dempsey's British Second Army drove relentlessly toward the Elbe, routing the sporadic delaying actions fought by Gen. Ernst Busch. Clearing the west bank of the river by April 26, Dempsey plunged across the Elbe to seize Lubeck and Wismar on May 2. Hamburg capitulated the next day. On May 4 all the German troops in the north surrendered to Montgomery.

With Hitler dead in Berlin, Adm. Karl Doenitz had taken over the German reins. Now compressed between the giant pincers of the Allies and Russia, Doenitz sued for peace. The unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany came on May 8. In the 11 months of fighting since D-Day the Allies lost 187,000 killed 546,000 wounded, and 110,000 missing. German losses totaled 580,000 killed or missing and 265,00 wounded. The Thousand-Year Reich had collapsed in 12 years.

Poland

(Sept. 1 - Sept. 27, 1939)

The German invasion of Poland on September 1 opened World War II. In addition to new armament and equipment the war introduced a new type of swift, mechanized attack, called blitzkrieg, or lightning war, in which an entire nation could become a single battlefield. The Nazi army launched the invasion with 58 divisions, 14 of which were armored (the Panzers) or motorized. In contrast, Poland's Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz could mobilize only 30 divisions and a single motorized brigade.

The attack was made by five powerful armies from three directions- Third Army (Georg von Kuechler) from East Prussia in the North, Fourth Army (Gunther von Kluge) from Pomerania in the west, and Eight Army (Johannes von Blaskowitz), Tenth Army (Walther von Reichenau), and Fourteenth Army (Siegmund List) from Silesia in the southwest. General Fedor von Bock commanded the northern army group, Gen. Karl von Rundstedt the army group to the south. In the first two days more than 1,400 attacking German aircraft destroyed the Polish Air Force of less than 900 planes, mostly on the ground.

Poland was quickly overrun, with large segements of its troops encircled and annihilated. Racing 140 miles the first week, armored spearheads of the Tenth Army reached the southern Warsaw suburbs on September 8 and began smashing the city with bombers and heavy artillery. Five days later the Third Army closed the pincers on Warsaw from the north. On September 17 the Fourth and Fourteenth Armies closed an outer pincers far to the east. On the same day the Russian Army marched into eastern Poland, covering 110 miles in two days to reach the old Curzon Line of 1919.

Beleagured Warsaw surrendered on September 27. The next day Germany and Russia partitioned Poland. A few Polish leaders escaped to Paris and then to London to set up a government-in-exile under Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski. German losses were 10,600 killed, 30,000 wounded, and 3,400 missing. About 450,000 Poles became prisoners of war, other casualties could not be determined. Russia then led a devastating invasion of Finland, while Germany feinted in the west and then attacked Norway.

Yugoslavia & Greece

(Apr. 6 - Apr. 24, 1941)

The pro-German Yugoslav government of Prince Paul was overthrown on March 27, 1941, by Gen. Dusan Simovic, who installed young Peter II as ruler. Ten days later the German Wehrmacht, 27 divisions strong, plunged into Yugoslavia (and simultaneosly into Greece) from four neighboring countries. From Austria and from Hungary, the German Second Army (Maximilian von Weichs) moved on Zagreb in the north and on Belgrade in the northeast. From Romania and from Bulgaria, Field Marshal Siegmund List's Twelfth Army with 15 divisions smashed into central and southern Yugoslavia toward Belgrade and Bitolj (Monastir). Yugoslavia was unable to mobilize its planned 40 divisions. Fragmented by knifing German armored attacks, plus an Italian advance from the west and a Hungarian thrust from the north, the ill-equipped Yugoslav forces were destroyed in detail.

Belgrade, bombed with calculated ruthlessness for three days, on April 6-8, suffered 17,000 civilian deaths. It was occupied on April 12 by converging German columns, King Peter fleeing to London on a British plane. Sarajevo fell on April 14 and three days later Yugoslavia capitulated. Five of List's divisions, which had knifed through to Bitolj in the southwest and thus prevented a possible link-up of Yugoslav and Greek forces, now turned south toward Athens. In all, about 6,000 Yugoslav officers and 335,000 enlisted men surrendered. German casualties totaled 558, dead, wounded, or missing.

Greece would put up a tougher fight than Yugoslavia. It was only until April 24th, 1941, that King George II surrendered his nation to the Germans. Some 54,000 British troops fought in Greece. After the Greek surrender some 41,000 British were evacuated to Crete and Egypt. Of the 13,000 British casualties, 8,000 were now captured by the Germans. The Germans themselves suffered 5,500 casualties, while the Italians suffered 125,000 casualties. Greek losses were not reported though the Germans captured some 270,000 Greek troops.

Operation Barbarossa

(June 22, 1941)

Following a successful seven-week campaign in the Balkans, Germany stood master of all Europe except for the island of Great Britain. With this fighting limited to the air and sea, the all victorious German ground forces were free for the long-planned drive to the East. This would be a different kind of war than that in the West. According to Hitler this would be a war of "annihilation" of the subhuman slavic population of the Soviet Union, viewed just as low and inferior as jews.

On June 22, 1941, Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, with 138 divisions, two less than when the Germans invaded France. The Germans had about 3 million troops, 3,000 tanks, and some 4,000 aircraft. On the left Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb's Army Group C (30 divisions) attacked from East Prussia through the Baltic states toward Leningrad. On the right Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt's Army Group A (57 divisions) drove southeast from southern Poland and Romania into the Ukraine. Army Group B (51 divisions) in the center carried the heaviest weight of armor. Here, from the vicinity of Warsaw, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock hurled his four armies north of the Pripet Marshes straight toward Moscow.

To defend against this onslaught, the Soviet Union had nearly 400 divisions, 24,000 tanks, and some 8,000 aircraft. Strength in numbers would be the Russian tactic throughout the war.

The center advance toward Moscow smashed through Russian Poland and Byelorussia north of the Pripet Marshes. By July 2 the Panzers of Gen. Heinz Guderian and Gen. Hermann Hoth had bypassed a large Russian force in the Bialystok-Slonim area. The German armor raced on to form a pincers at Minsk, 200 miles inside the Soviet Union, on June 27. In six days German infantry had killed or captured 300,000 Russian troops. Continuing their drive along the Minsk-Moscow highway, the Panzers crossed the Dnieper River on July 10 and reached Smolensk six days later. here, 400 miles into the Soviet Union, another large pincers closed. Some 180,000 Russians were killed and 273,000 wounded. German troops captured 300,000 Russian soldiers, 3,205 tanks, and 3,120 artillery pieces.

Hitler ordered Bock to halt, while Guderian's Second Panzer Group and Gen. Maximilian von Weich's Second Army were turned south toward Kiev.

Battle of Kiev

(Aug. 22 - Sep. 26, 1941)

Germans began the offensive on August 22, with purpose to route Soviet forces defending the Kiev area. To this time the group of armies "South" by forces of 1st Panzer group adjoined with 11th Army and Romanian armies. At the Dnieper river the 6th German Army settled down. It occupied a covering place in relation to large Russian bridgehead in Kiev area and after successful fights under Gomel by the left flank adjoined with 2nd Army. Last settled down by front on the southeast up to Novozybkov and owed, coming in the south direction encircled Russian forces. The large Russian forces were on bridgehead on the right bank of Dnieper river.

August 25, the 2nd German Army and 2nd Panzer group took the offensive in the south direction. The Panzer group took possession of Konotop city, located far in rear of the Soviet front line.

By the end of August on open right flank of "Southwest" front, on the Desna river (in area to the north and northwest of Konotop), the new 40th Soviet Army was created. On 125-kilometer front from Shostka up to Volovine there were only two rifle divisions (135th, withdrawed from the border and 239th). To aid of 40th Army forces, II Air-Landing Corps and 10th Tank Division were thrown in the counterattack. German troops were stopped for several days, but since August 27, the 40th Soviet Army was involved in wearisome defense fights. Offensive operation of "Bryansk" front on Roslavle and Novozybsk directions whith purpose to liquidate break between 13th and 21st Soviet Armies, was finished unsuccessfully. In result of German counter-attack in Novgorod - Seversk area the break between armies has increased till 60-75 km. The front of a defense of 21st Army was broken and army forces has passed to a mobile defense. The 5th Soviet Army couldn't stabilize a defense line. August 30, 21st Army located on the north of "Bryansk" front has unexpectedly departed, having opened flank of "Southwest" front. The German formations immediately have directed in break on approaches to Chernigov, and on their ways remained only weak forces of 15th Soviet rifle corps.

In the evening of September 7, the Military Council of "Southwest" front has informed the Soviet High Command, that conditions at the front line has become complicated. The Germans has concentrated superior forces, develop success offensive on Konotop, Chernigov and Kremenchug directions. The threat of an encirclement of the main forces of 5th Soviet Army was clearly designated. The front applied the basic efforts on the Kremenchug direction to liquidate enemy bridgehead. The Military Council of front asked permit to allocate 5th Army and right flank of 37th Army behind the Desna river line. Down to September 17, Stalin didn't consided the question of removal Soviet forces from Kiev. It is explained that in this time undertaken offensive of "West", "Reserve" and "Bryansk" fronts go on. The purpose of this Soviet offensive was defeat German 2nd Panzer group comming from the north to Kiev.

Heavy defense fights were conducted with 38th army, since September 12, it began a withdrawal on the east.

In fights, which proceeded more than two weeks, 2nd German Army advanced up to Desna and forced it. September 10, 3rd Panzer Division in interaction with parachute descent, landed in Romny city, cut of position of 40th Soviet Army. Using this success, Germans were promptly move in rear of the Soviet front near Kiev. Simultaneously 2nd Panzer group, continuously beating off counterattack against stretched east flank, September 14 by advanced parts has reached Romny area.

From bridgehead, created by 17th German Army in area of Kremenchug, 1st Panzer group together with 17th Army on September 10, began offensive and September 16, in Lohvitsa area has incorporated with 2nd Panzer group. As a result of this offensive, simultaneous impact of 6th German Army through Dniepers till both sides of Kiev, which September 19 was encircled and taken, and further progress of 2nd Army from north, Russian forces which are taking place in a triangle of Kiev, Cherkassy, Lohvitsa, were compressed from different directions. At this time Panzer groups in fierce fights beat off attempts Russian to deblock the forces from the east. The 4th and 2nd German air fleet, working consecutive waves, continuously supported overland armies. September 26 the battle was finished. The battle of Kiev would go down in history as a great victory for the Germans. The greatest surrender in the history of all warfare took place at Kiev, some 665,000 Russian soldiers surrendering, 50 Soviet divisions, or 5 Soviet Armies ceased to exist after the battle ended. Germans also captured 3,718 guns and 884 tanks.

Leningrad

(Sep. 1, 1941 - Jan. 27, 1944)

The gigantic German invasion of the Soviet Union smashed forward on three fronts - north, center, and south - in the summer of 1941. On the northern front the principal objective was the key Baltic port of Leningrad, the second largest city in Russia. To secure this goal Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb grouped two German armies in East Prussia, the Sixteenth and Eighteenth, plus the Third Panzer Group of Gen. Erich Hoeppner. On June 22 this force lunged northeast into Lithuania, crossed the Niemen River, and captured the capital of Vilnius four days later. Racing ahead, Gen. Erich von Manstein's Panzer corps seized bridges over the Dvina River almost 200 miles farther north in Latvia. Riga, the Latvian capital, fell on July 1. While tanks sped on toward Lake Ilmen, German infantry marched into Estonia. In August Leeb's left wing completed the conquest of the Baltic states up to Narva on the Estonian-Russian border. The Estonian capital of Tallin fell on August 30. The right wing was sweeping through Pskov, Staraya Russia, and Novgorod, while Hoeppner's armor pressed north to Luga, only 90 miles from Leningrad.

Meanwhile Finland had declared war on the Soviet Union on June 26 and was working closely with the Nazis. The main Finnish force of 12 divisions under Field Marshal Baron Carl von Mannerheim, plus two German divisions, threatened Leningrad from the north by driving down the Karelinian Isthmus.

Pressed from both north and south, the Russian Gen. Kliment Voroshilov pulled back his 250,000 troops inside the city and put the entire population on forced labor constructing defenses. Gen. M. Khozin then took over as commandant of Leningrad.

A Russian attack aginst the Sixteenth Army at Lake Ilmen in Feb. 1942 failed to drive away the besieging Germans. In Jan. 1943, Gen. Leonid Govorov and Gen. Kirill Meretskov led another assault on the Nazi vise but failed to break through.

German command argued against besieging the city, however, Hitler believed it was best to starve out the city. This would be the first of his many military strategies that in turn cost the Germans victory on the Eastern Front. German command at Leningrad began to take a hit also. Leeb was replaced by Field Marshal Ernst Busch early in 1942 and Busch, in turn, by Field Marshal Georg Kuechler later that summer.

In mid-January 1944 four Russian Armies, some 850,000 troops, launched a major offensive aimed at breaking the Leningrad siege - Govorov (Leningrad Army), Meretskov (Volkhov Army), Markian Popov (Second Baltic Army), and Ivan Bagramian (First Baltic Army). They faced an estimated 300,000 German and Finnish troops. Attacking along a 120-mile front from Lake Ilmen north to Leningrad, Meretskov fought his way into Novgorod on January 15 and 10 days later, aided by Govorov, cleared the east bank of the Volkhov River. The Moscow road to Leningrad was open at last, ending a siege of over 900 days. German and Finnish casualties were some 200,000 in killed, wounded, or missing. Russian figures were stagering, some 2,000,000 soldiers and civilians were killed. The civilians at Leningrad suffered the most. Trapped inside they faced constant German shelling and whoever was left alive had to face starvation inside the besieged city. Murder and cannibalism was rampant, infact nearly 300 people were sentenced to prison terms after the war for acts of canibalism.

Moscow

(Oct. 8, 1941 - Apr. 30, 1942)

In the overpowering Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the initial German drive toward Moscow had halted near Smolensk throughout September. During this time Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's Army Group Center sent two armies southward to close a gigantic pincers with Army Group South, at Kiev. On Oct. 2 the reassembled force of 60 divisions resumed its attack in an attempt to make the last 200 miles into the capital by winter.

On the right Gen. Heinz Guderian's Second Panzer Group plunged through Orel on October 8 and Chern on October 24 and then ground on toward Tula, 100 miles directly south of Moscow. In the center, the Third and Fourth Panzer groups under Gen. Hermann Hoth and Erich Hoeppner powered a huge pincers movement at Vyazma. About 600,000 Russians were killed or captured in this encirclement between October 2 and 13. Third Panzer armor (now commanded by Hans Reinhardt), backed up by the Ninth Army, then swung north and west of the city, taking Kalinin on October 15. In the center Gen. Gunther von Kluge's Fourth Army smashed straight at the capital, now only 40 miles away. The Russian government moved 550 miles southeast to Kuibyshev on the Volga, while Stalin thought about fleeing but decided to stay. Stalin also had made contacts through Bulgaria about offering Germany large amounts of land in Russia in exchange for peace. However, Germany never showed any interest in such a suggestion, this was a war of "annihilation of the subhuman slavs" as Hitler put it.

The mood in Moscow varied. Some had put up signs welcoming the German liberators, others tried to flee. Two NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) Divisions were brought to Moscow to maintain order. No one was allowed to leave. Cars trying to flee were overturned and people shot. Stalin's new order also called for the execution of anyone refusing to fight on grounds of "cowardness." The NKVD divisions dug trenches on the outskirts of Moscow and shot any soldier or civilian trying to flee the city. Thousands were executed by the NKVD branded as cowards.

At this point, however, roads made muddy by heavy rains slowed the German advance. Kluge's attack picked up speed again when frost hardened the ground in mid-November. But on November 20 the full fury of the Russian winter virtually paralyzed men and machines. A last gasp effort came on December 2. The 2nd Panzer Division ploughed to within sight of the Kremlin (ordered blown up by Hitler to signal the overthrow of Communism) but could move no farther. This was the first time that German troops were stopped in Russia. Now the Germans were learning much like Napoleon did, defeating Russian troops may be easy but surviving the Russian winter is not. Tanks and machines froze in their places. Russian tanks and machines were made to withstand the Russian winter and this German delay now gave the Russians time to prepare.

Despite the absence of cold-weather clothing and equipment, Hitler forbade the German troops to withdraw. This order caused terrible suffering and thousands of casualties from the cold. The German plight worsened on December 6 when Gen. Georgi Zhukov, who had replaced Semen Timoshenko on this front, launched a counter-offensive with 100 fresh divisions.

Pressing westward, the Russians captured Kaluga on December 26, lost it, and then recaptured the city four days later. North of Moscow, Kalinin had been retaken after heavy street fighting, on December 15. Kluge, now commanding the central German armies, fell back Vyazma, in the south, and Rzhev, in the north, both 125 miles from Moscow. Along this line Kluge organized a series of hedgehog positions that managed to resist further Russian advances. But the severe cold caused more casualties than did enemy action, reducing some corps to a third of their fighting strength and ending German offensive power to this sector.

German casualties totaled some 340,000 in killed, wounded, and missing. Russian losses were 653,000 killed, 374,000 wounded, 3,200 tanks lost, 500 aircraft lost, and 16,000 artillery pieces lost. Speaking on Russian terms, relatively small losses.

Stalingrad

(Aug. 23, 1942 - Feb. 2, 1943)

In 1942 the german offensive in Russia was concentrated on the southern front. On the left, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock (Army Group B) had as his principal target the strategic city of Stalingrad. Southward, on the right, Army Group A aimed at gaining the rich oil fields of the Caucasus. Bock launched the attack on June 22 from the line of the upper Donetz (Izyum, Kharkov, Kursk). The left wing advanced to the Don at Voronezh on July 1 but could not hold the city, a failure that was to prove disastrous three months later. Bock was replaced by Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs on July 13.

Farther south, however, Gen. Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army raced 100 miles to the Don and then turned southeast to slant down the corridor between the Donetz and the Don. This drive helped Gen. Paul von Kleist's First Panzer Army cross the lower Don in its advance into the Caucasus. Meanwhile Gen. Freidrich von Paulus marched the German Sixth Army eastward from the Don bend toward Stalingrad on the right (west) bank of the Volga.

On August 24 the German ground forces pressed into the western outskirts of the city. But the Sixty-Second Red Army, supplemented by civilians, fought a desperate block-by-block and house-by-house defense under the direction of Gen. Vassil Chuikov. By September 22 the Germans had reached the center of the city, now reduced to rubble by intense artillery bombardment.

Throughout the early weeks of the battle Gen. Georgi Zhukov reinforced the Stalingrad garrison from across (east of) the Volga just enough to prevent the Germans from reaching the river in force. At the same time the Russians strengthened their flanks above and below the city. On November 19, over ground hardened by frost, the Russian Gen. Konstantin Rokossovski attacked north of the city, and two days later his armor bridged the Don River at Kalach. Through this opening Gen. Nikolai Vatutin routed three successive satellite armies - Third Romanian, Eight Italian, and Second Hungarian. A counterattack by two armored divisions (Panzer Corps H) proved futile. South of the city, Gen. Andrei Yeremenko lunged forward on Novemebr 20 and in five days routed the Fourth Romanian Army of 15 divisions. Some 65,000 prisoners were taken. The two Russian drives now pushed forward to link up west of Stalingrad. Hitler refused to let the Sixth Army withdraw, and on November 23 the Russia ring closed around some 230,000 German and satellite troops (22 divisions).

The original pocket was 25 miles long east to west and about half as deep. The only communication with German headquarters was by radio and airplane. Reich Marshal Hermann Goering promised that his Luftwaffe would fly in an average of 300 tons of supplies a day. But bad weather kept German supplies well below this subsistence minimum. Although Hitler continued to refuse permission for the Sixth Army to leave the Volga, he did allow Gen. Erich von Manstein to organize a relief force (Army Group Don) in an attempt to break through the Russian ring. The German Panzers advanced steadily until Decemeber 21, when they stood only 30 miles from Paulus' force. But here the attack bogged down, and two days later it was called off.

The Red Armies around the cauldron immediately renewed their offensive, which in six weeks had cost the German army 300,000 casualties. The Sixth Army was now doomed. A formal demand for surrender came on January 8, but Hitler refused permission. Two days later the Russians, behind a heavy artillery barrage, assaulted the trapped Germans from three sides. By January 16 the last major airfield was taken and the pocket reduced to 15 miles long by 9 miles deep. During the next eight days Russian armor knifed through and split the pocket in two segments. The Russians again demanded surrender, and again Hitler ordered a fight to the last man. He then promoted Paulus to Field Marshal, knowing that this would force him to fight to the death since no Field Marshal had ever surrendered. But it was too late, the next day, February 2, Paulus surrendered his remaining force. Of the 230,000 Germans and Axis troops surrounded at Stalingrad, 120,000 were killed, 25,000 wounded soldiers were evacuated by air, and 91,000 were captured. Russian casualties were only recently revealed. Over 1,000,000 Russian soldiers died at Stalingrad, in addition to 2,800 aircraft lost, 4,100 tanks destroyed, and 15,000 artillery pieces lost. Stalingrad also witnessed a new Russian weapon, the penal Battalion. Men who were criminals were now forced to fight. Some were made to walk on minefields, others to charge a German position as bait. Once the Germans would fire and kill them the Russians would know how strong the German position is. No one knows how many died, hundreds of thousands would be a low estimate, since the Soviets kept no records.

This was Hitler's greatest blunder of WWII. The German war machine which went on a blitzkrieg in Russia annihilating any Russian force in its path was bogged down in bitter house to house fighting playing right into the hands of Russia. The city that bore the name of his hated enemy (Stalin) mesmorized Hitler and he became obsesed with capturing it at any cost despite calls from his generals that argued against attacking Stalingrad.

Ofcourse Stalingrad is also now remebered for the famed sniper duel between the best Russian sniper and the best SS sniper. Chief Master Sergeant Vasily Zaitsev is credited with 242 kills at Stalingrad and 400 overall in WWII, though we will never know the true count since Soviet propaganda tends to inflate numbers a lot. The story goes that after about 100 kills by Zaitsev the Germans decide to send their best to kill him. The task is given to SS sniper Col. Heinz Thorvald. Thorvald then kills a man who was with Zaitsev and thus sealing his death because he gave away his position. Today you can see the scope from Thorvald's rifle at a museum in Moscow. However, the story is pure Soviet propaganda. First, there is absolutely no record of an SS soldier by the name Heinz Thorvald. Secondly, sniping stories were well documented at Stalingrad. Stories were often published to raise the moral of the people living in Stalingrad. Amazingly no newspaper or document from that time at Stalingrad makes note of this amazing feat done by Zaitsev. Only until after the war the story comes out, Zaitsev ofcourse is immediately proclaimed "Hero of the Soviet Union" for his "courageaus act." And lastly, Zaitsev himself never acknowledged nor denied the duel at Stalingrad.

Third Battle of Kharkov

(Feb. 20 - Mar. 18, 1943)

On Jan. 23, along the whole 435 mile front from the Sea of Azov in the south to Kharkov in the north, there were just 495 German tanks to 5,000 Russian tanks. In March, Field Marshal von Manstein (Commander of newly redesignated Army Group South) estimated that he had only 32 divisions. Against this, the Russians could deploy 341 formations, including armored brigades and rifle divisions. The ratio was about seven to one in men all in Russia's favor.

To the Russians their most promising strategy was obvious. Much of the Axis force in the south compromised of Romanian, Italian, and Hungarian armies, infinitely inferior to German formations. If these, sited between the Russian Southwest Front (Gen. Nikolai Vatutin) and the Voronezh Front (Gen. Filipp Golikov), could be broken by westward thrusts, then the German south wing might be cut off and boxed in on the coast.

In response, von Manstein was intent on making a strategic withdrawal, that is, retreating but, in doing so, luring the Russians forward in the mistaken belief of a general German retreat, even disintergration. Then, with the power of a coiled spring released, he could hurl the foe back with maximum losses.

On Jan. 15 the Russians on the Voronezh Front mounted a great offensive. The Second Hungarian Army was broken, and Russians units drove through the gap formed, which was about 175 miles wide. Although the German Caucasus Armies had been successfully withdrawn, von Manstein faced encirclement. Indications showed the Russian thrust was aimed at Zaporozhe, Army Group South's main supply base and von Manstein's HQ.

To order a strategi withdrawal, von Manstein had first to secure Hitler's permission. The Fuhrer's reluctance to give up any captured territory in the face of counter-attacks was much criticized after the war, notably by defeated German generals. They claimed that the "little corporal," by his insistence and his constant interference with strategic planning, caused calamitous decisions to be taken.

Hitler now faced troubles elsewhere. In January Montgomery's Eight Army entered Tripoli and the days of the Afrika Korps were numbered. He was also now forced to make preparations for an Allied invasion of Europe. On Feb. 6 1943, the Fuhrer visited von Manstein at his headquarters. Withdrawal plans were discussed, and Hitler was attentive and agreed, or so von Manstein understood.

Drawn up at von Manstein's own headquarters, the plans were safe from the Russian "Lucy Ring", an espionage network that operated through Switzerland and reported direct to Moscow, which normally knew what was happening at Hitler's HQ.

Meanwhile, the Russians, certain they had victory within their grasp, were pressing forward at maximum speed. They failed, however, to read the significance of an omnious sign: of the many prisoners they had taken, few were German. By Feb. 21 advance Russian tanks reached the River Dnieper, almost within sight of the German main base at Zaporozhe. The Russians were doing precisely what von Manstein had hoped, the farther they advanced, the more punishing would be the counter-attack.

Von Manstein's counter-attack opened on Feb. 22 with about 350 tanks. Five Panzer Divisions, in a coordinated movement and enjoying massive air support, struck northward at the advancing Russians' left flank. While the 48th Panzer Corps struck toward Barvenovka, 17th Panzer Division took Izyum and Protoponovka on the River Donets. The SS Panzer Corps, thrusting through Losovaya, established contact to the north with Army Detachment Kempf. The euphoric Russians were taken wholly by surprise.

The terrain was almost flat and the rivulets criss-crossing it frozen, enabling German armor to move at their maximum speed. Some Russian formations eluded the trap, but most were savaged. By March 6, 23,000 Russians had been killed or wounded, 615 tanks destroyed, and more that 1,000 artillery guns of all sort captured, along with 9,000 men.

On March 3, the intense cold of winter lossened its grip, but the ensuing thaw brought with it mud, the most serious impediment to tank movement. Though time was now on the Russian side, German formations still made gains. The SS Panzer Corps, under Hausser, encirlcled Kharkov by driving north of it and attacking the city from both north and west. There was heavy street fighting but after four days, Kharkov was once again in German hands on march 15. The great city fell, in von Manstein's words, "without difficulty."

After the German disaster at Stalingrad, von Manstein's achievement in stabilizing the German front must rank as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) achievements of WWII. He had executed a successful withdrawal, he had then launched a masterly counter-attack that caused the Russians immense losses in men and material. Most important of all, he had re-established the German front from Taganrog to Belgorod as a virtually straight defensive line and, at little cost, had retaken the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union. All this when his opponents possessed a considerable numerical advantage.

The battle for Kharkov left some 101,000 Russian soldiers dead, 184,000 wounded, 1,345 tanks destroyed, 5,291 artillery pieces lost, and 417 aircraft destroyed. Three Soviet Armies and tank corps had been destroyed, but the Soviets could replace their losses.

Kursk: Operation Citadel

(July 5 - 17, 1943)

When the spring thaw halted von Manstein's counter-offensive in the Kharkov area, a Soviet salient 100 miles across by 70 miles deep, centered on Kursk, remained in the German lines. Hitler believed that this could be eliminated by directing converging thrusts through its flanks, thereby weakening the Soviet Army to a great extent. The detailed planning of the operation, codenamed "Operation Citadel", was undertaken by Gen. Zeitzler, Chief of Army General Staff, but many German senior officers had serious reservations about the undertaking. Operation Citadel would involve 900,000 men, 2,400 tanks, 10,000 artillery pieces, and 2,500 aircraft. Facing them the Russians had deployed 1,337,000 men, 3,340 tanks, 20,000 artillery pieces, and 2,650 aircraft.

Kept fully informed of German intentions at Kursk by the Lucy Spy Ring, the Soviets fortified the salient to a depth of 25 miles with three concentric defensive belts incorporating minefields with a density of 2,500 anti-personnel and 2,200 anti-tank mines per mile on front, covered by artillery and anti-tank guns. Gen. Zhukov's intention was to wear down the German strength as they fought their way through the defenses, then counter-attack.

The battle began on July 5 and was, from the outset, one of attrition. German troops penetrated 10 miles and then fought to a standstill. The defenses, mainly the mines, had cost the Germans 40% of its armor before any Russian tank came into view. On July 12 the battle reached its climax when 700 tanks from Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army met by accident with 850 tanks of Rotmistrov's Fifth Guards Tank Army. What followed was the largest tank battle ever. Some 500 German tanks were destroyed at a cost of over 600 Russian tanks. Even though the Germans performed better they had one disadvantage from the get go, the Russians could replace their losses.

The following day, in the wake of the Allied landings at Sicily, Hitler informed his senior officers that the Russian Front would have to be stripped of troops to form fresh armies in Italy. On July 17 Hitler announced that Operation Citadel was at an end.

German losses were some 100,000 dead, wounded, and missing, plus around 1,000 tanks destroyed. Russian losses were 70,330 dead, 107,517 wounded, 1,614 tanks lost, 3,929 artillery pieces lost, and 459 aircraft lost. Again Russian forces despite greater losses came out victorious and could replace its material lost.

Operation Bagration

(June 22 - Aug. 27, 1944)

The intention of the Soviet High Command was to drive the Germans out of Byelorussia (Eastern Poland annexed by the Soviets in 1939) and to inflict a crippling losses on Army Group Center which consisted of some 60 divisions. The Soviets put together 170 divisions (2,400,000 men), 4,000 tanks, 28,600 artillery pieces, and 5,300 aircraft. The Germans could muster 60 divisions (some 1,000,000 men), tough German divisions were not up to strength, 900 tanks, 10,000 artillery pieces, and 1,300 aircraft.

Commander of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Ernst Busch, aware of the Soviet preparations, requested permission to withdraw behind the Berezina River. This way the initial weight of the Russian blow would land in empty space, thereby dislocating the timetable for the offensive and creating conditions for a counter-offensive. Hitler, his corporal genius knew better than a mear Field Marshal, flatly dismissed the idea and ordered Army Group Center to hold its ground. The stage was now set for a catastrophy that deserves to be credited not to the Russians, but to Hitler's incompetence.

While German troops undoubtedly fought hard and inflicted terrible casualties, large numbers were cut off at Vitebsk on June 27, at Mogilev on the 28th, at Bobruysk on the 29th and east Minsk on July 3. When the offensive finally ran down as it approached the Vistula during the last week of August, it had torn a 250 mile gap 450 miles deep in the German line. Operation Bagration is regarded by Russian historians as the decisive battle of the Great Patriotic War. Certainly, it delt the Germans a blow from which they would never recover in the war.

However, Soviet troops were also criticized for what happened after the battle. An uprising took place in Warsaw by Polish partisans calling themselves the "Polish Home Army." As they were being slaughtered by the German troops and pleading for assistance from the Soviet Union, the Red Army just stood by until everyone was killed then entered the city. Apparently a weak Poland with no desires of regaining Eastern Poland (today Belarus) is what Stalin wanted and received.

German casualties amounted to 350,000 killed, wounded, or missing, 21 generals captured and 10 killed. Interesting enough the Soviet commanders themselves described their own casualties as "appaling." Nearly 180,000 killed, 587,308 wounded, 2,957 tanks lost, 2,447 artillery pieces lost, and 822 aircraft lost.

Battle of Kurland

(Sep. 14, 1944 - May 8, 1945)

As a direct result of Operation Bagration Army Group North was now cut off near present day Kurland, Latvia. In mid-October 1944, 32 German divisions and 20,000 men of the Latvian 19th Division of the Waffen SS , about 300,000 soldiers, were cut off from the rest of the German Army Group Center. Encircled by the Soviet army on the east and south, and by the Baltic Sea on the north and west. Gen. Heinz Guderian asked Hitler's permission for a withdrawal, and again the same order came down "fight to the last man."

On September 14 the Soviets saught to eliminate these 32 divisions. Even though the Germans were trapped, they posed a threat if they broke out and then they would be behind Russian lines, particularly behind Gen. Zhukov who was advancing on Berlin. To face the 32 German divisions the Russians sent 135 of their own divisions (1,546,400 men). The battle lasted until November 24 when the Russians simply advanced on East Prussia while a force was left nehind to eliminate the pocket at Kurland. All Germans fighting there understood Hitler was defeated, and the Reich would soon collapse. But they held the line, keeping the Russians out of Kurland, until May 8, 1945, when Germany capitulated. These soldiers remained undefeated until the final moments of the war.

Russian casualties were 61,468 killed, 218,622 wounded, 522 tanks lost, 2,593 artillery pieces lost, and 779 aircraft lost.

Battle of Seelow Heights

(April 8 - 11, 1945)

There was still one major obstacle to the Soviet advance on Berlin, the rolling plains and plateaus of an area known as the Seelow Heights, only 35 miles from the German capital.

The Soviets drove a wedge into Prussia, but their losses were heavy. Six Soviet infantry and two tank divisions were wiped out after a series of assaults on Vitebsk, Orsha, Allenstein and Königsberg. Then the Red Army halted, allowing the Germans time to prepare a defense on the approach to Berlin.

The man chiefly responsible for the German forward units was Gen. Hasso Baron von Manteuffel (Third Panzer Army). Manteuffel had been forced back to positions that extended 95 miles from Stettin to the junction of the Hohenzollern Canal and the Oder River. Below Manteuffel on his right was Gen. Theodore Busse (German Ninth Army). He was to prevent the Soviet pincer movement that Marshal Konev was expected to execute. The hammer was to strike the anvil during the first week of April.

Konev ordered his armor to attack on a broad front, converging into a spearhead and then swinging around the left flank of the German defenders. On April 8, after several smaller encounters, the Soviet armor proved inadequate, even with infantry support. German defenders from a mixed bag of units were armed with stockpiles of Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons. They also had many tank destroyers, rocket launchers and carefully prepared minefields. Most important of all, they had nothing to lose.

By the end of the first day of the assault, the Soviets were learning just how expensive the Seelow Heights were going to be. Soviet losses added up to 75 tanks, 2,250 killed, 3,400 wounded and 12 Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik fighter-bombers lost. German losses included two Tiger I heavy tanks, four Hanomag halftracks, three Messerschmitt Me-109 fighters, seven Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers and approximately 300 killed, with a like number wounded.

On April 9 the first wave of T-34 medium tanks, numbering about 50, was utterly destroyed by rockets, Stukas, mines and Panzerfausts. The second wave, following the same route as its predecessor, hoping to take advantage of the cleared paths through the German minefield. Soviet fighters managed to keep the Stukas at bay, but nothing could overwhelm the German troops, who were equipped with anti-tank rockets. The second Soviet wave suffered a fate similar to that of the first, leaving 34 smoking wrecks and several hundred dead littering the open plains.

Manteuffel knew that he could not hold out much longer. He had no replacements and no additional armor. He placed heavy emphasis on his anti-tank gunners, armed with a few 88mm and several 75mm PAK 40 artillery pieces. He had even conscripted a local anti-aircraft battery. Luftwaffe air support would be crucial, but the fighter squadrons of Jagdgeschwader 54 and 52 were outnumbered 20-to-1. Their airfields had already been overrun. Stukageschwader 2, the so-called Immelman wing, was spread out over the entire area. Nevertheless, its planes accounted for 149 Russian tanks.

One of the most hotly contested areas was defended by SS Major Rudolf Falkenhahn, whose company of 130 men had been reduced to 58 by April 9. They had knocked out nine tanks on the 8th and 11 on the 9th. The morning of April 10 would test the best of them.

Just to Falkenhahn's right was Major Hannes Gottlieb, with a ragtag mixture of soldiers manning the PAK 40 anti-tank guns. They were having a field day until the attack on the morning of the 10th. They had 12 guns and were down to 18 rounds per fieldpiece. Small arms were limited as well, and the infantrymen were eagerly anticipating an airdrop with a resupply. Food had been unavailable since April 4, and the desperate need for water was reason enough to kill the enemy. Men often raced across the smoke-shrouded ground to strip corpses of canteens and ammunition.

Manteuffel knew there were gaps in the line, and during the night of the 9th he ordered them filled--not with soldiers but with 88mm guns, which were rolled into place and concealed. The right flank was protected by only a dozen 75mm guns, with the front wide open. All the gunners had to do, however, was turn their guns slightly and the open gap to the front would be covered by interlocking anti-tank fire. The Germans also planted new mines, in many cases unearthing the old ones that remained intact and creating a new minefield in front of the new positions.

The SS men destroyed more than a dozen T-34s and a JS-1 heavy tank, then crawled under them for protection. Soviet armor raced forward to take advantage of the confusion. They ran right into a German artillery barrage. Soviet tanks and infantry were shredded by the creeping fire. Konev saw 30 percent of his unit's total strength die on the vine in front of his eyes.

The Soviets attacked again. Konev had told his subordinate commanders that should any of them survive the next assault without driving the Germans from the heights, they would be shot for cowardice. Battalion commanders led from the rear with their guns pointed at the backs of their men. German machine-gunners had a field day. The Soviets would have suffered even more casualties had the Germans not been running out of ammunition. Since sunrise, another 400 Germans had died at their forward positions. Behind them lay another 60 disabled Soviet tanks and nearly 2,000 dead and wounded Soviet troops.

German troops too badly mauled to survive were shot so that they would not fall into Soviet hands. Manteuffel knew that without reinforcements and armor support, his defense would collapse regardless of how many Soviets his men killed. Konev had suffered a total of 4,000 killed, with nearly 300 tanks destroyed, and he had advanced only two kilometers in three days. He decided that it was time to commit his reserves, two tank divisions and three infantry regiments. The Soviet commander ordered his artillery to fire smoke shells to conceal the advance.

Falkenhahn's men were ordered to engage the enemy tanks with rockets, while another group used the smoke as concealment to run close to the tanks and hurl mines at them. Loud cheers rose from the ranks as the Germans captured Soviet armor. Although many of the tanks would not roll, the Germans operated their main guns, firing on the advancing Soviets. The tanks that could still be driven were taken back to the German positions and used as supplemental anti-tank pieces.

Gottlieb and his survivors faced a more serious dilemma. Soviet tanks had scaled the shallow banks of the hillside, and although 20 were burning within mere feet of his positions, Gottlieb ordered a pullback. There were too many Soviets for a standing fight. Gottlieb and his men retreated to the secondary defense line, commanded by Major Heinz Wilker.

Wilker was a veteran of Stalingrad and had witnessed Soviet attacks like this before. He personally held out against 14 human-wave attacks. The fighting was very similar to that at Stalingrad, with the Soviets seemingly unconcerned by their heavy losses. Wilker commanded a battalion of Hitler Youth and Volkssturm, augmented by Gottlieb's soldiers and newly arrived paratroops. The Soviet tanks halted when they entered the minefield and began to reverse their course. Wilker's boy soldiers attacked the remainder with Panzerfausts and Molotov cocktails. Still, the German defense buckled. Konev's weight of numbers--rather than any grand strategy--was winning the day.

Falkenhahn was having troubles of his own by that time. He had personally destroyed five tanks, the last of which exploded after he fired a rocket into it from only 30 meters away. The blazing fuel sprayed him, setting him afire. Another man helped him extinguish the flames.

On the afternoon of April 10, Zhukov radioed Konev asking what the delay was. He told Konev that he had just received word from Stalin that Berlin had better be in Soviet hands by May 1. The message was clear. Konev assured Zhukov that he would be able to support Zhukov's drive to the German capital by April 12.

SS Gen. Felix Steiner, mastermind of the Kiev offensive in Russia, gathered a relief force of about 26,000 men, including 24 tanks, 15 tank destroyers, and dozens of halftracks and trucks. Konev was made aware of the German movement to the east, Zhukov would now have to swing south and intercept the force, wasting valuable time in order to aid Konev.

By April 10, Konev had gained another mile of ground but had lost another 3,000 men and a total of 368 tanks. His armored force had been rendered virtually ineffective. Konev ordered a last-ditch effort by the Soviet air force. Before sundown on the 10th, 30 Shturmoviks flew three sorties in a row, blasting the known German positions. But the Germans had already retreated to a safer area, and as soon as darkness fell they regained their old defensive fortifications. The night saw a series of bloody confrontations as Konev launched infantry assault after assault. Manteuffel ordered a smaller, tightly defended perimeter.

Wilker held the left flank, Gottlieb secured the rear from any flanking maneuvers, and Falkenhahn held the right to the north. The center was weakly defended, yet still mined and covered by some of the remaining guns. From 1900 to 2130 hours, Konev launched four attacks. One battalion led by Majors Ilya Kurov and Anna Nikolina was wiped out. Three hundred of the 500 Soviets in the assault perished, but the survivors regrouped for another assault. At 2215 a series of flares went up, and the Soviets attacked again. This time they approached the weakly defended center and ran into the minefield. Dozens of men died clearing a path, and their comrades advanced over their twisted bodies. When the attackers entered the defensive perimeter, hand-to-hand combat ensued.

In the light of flares and the glow of burning tanks, men were locked in a death struggle. It was estimated that 400 Soviets entered the perimeter, engaging a like number of Germans. The fighting finally ceased around midnight, when the last Soviet soldier inside the compound was killed. Manteuffel himself was wounded when a group of Soviets burst into the command center. Four of his staff were killed and another four wounded before the six intruders were shot down. Manteuffel, who was a former World War I cavalry officer, shot one of his attackers and cut the other down with a trench knife.

When Falkenhahn tried to speak with Manteuffel, he found that the general had been moved farther back due to his wound. This left the initiative with each commander. Falkenhahn contacted Wilker and Gottlieb, and they decided to abandon their positions. Should they reach the relief column, they could attack and regain the Seelow Heights. They knew the move had to be made quickly, however, since dawn was only four hours away.

The Germans left their positions, taking as many of the wounded as they could and manhandling the operable weapons. A small group would stay behind to try to deceive the Russians--then they would retreat as soon as they saw the first sign of enemy movement. Konev received word that his support was 10 miles away and would arrive at 0530. He ordered his men to attack as soon as reinforcements arrived. At 0500 the sun was beginning to rise, and Konev ordered another artillery barrage. By 0545 on April 11, the Soviet tanks had arrived, and the barrage was lifted. Konev ordered the attack to commence, and the supporting infantry moved out. They covered the two kilometers quickly, and the Germans who had stayed behind fired a few shots, then retreated. The armor caught up to them after sweeping through the empty positions, and the Germans stopped behind a ridge. They ambushed the tanks, destroying a dozen before they were cut down. There were no German survivors.

Wilker was covering the rear of the retreat. After almost five hours his command had traveled 16 miles on foot, and the soldiers could hear the fire of the distant artillery. One of the men had a radio and contacted the relief unit en route. According to Wilker, they should link up in six hours. In the meantime they requested air support to impede the Soviet pursuit that was sure to follow.

Konev realized what had happened. He ordered the tanks to roll at top speed to catch up to the escapees. The T-34s ate up the distance quickly, and Wilker radioed Falkenhahn and Gottlieb that they had company. Then a flight of Stukas appeared. The first wave dropped 500-pound bombs on the Soviet tanks. The second echelon swooped down and hammered away at the survivors with their 37mm anti-tank cannons. Five tanks were destroyed, and the rest scattered to avoid the onslaught.

Gottlieb ordered his men to stand fast and prepare an anti-tank defense. Falkenhahn and his men would move farther west and then establish a defensive position, allowing Gottlieb's men to fall back under cover. Wilker had his men disperse and fill the ranks of the other two elements.

Manteuffel had to make his report to Hitler: "After several days of fierce fighting, I do not blame the individual German soldier, he fought against incredible odds, outnumbered forty to one. We have seriously weakened the enemy force, but cannot halt the Russian advance. I bear all responsibility. Manteuffel."

Until recently the Russians had claimed that they lost 10,000 men during the battle for the Seelow Heights and 100,000 in Berlin. The actual figures were only released after the fall of communism. No less than 30,000 Red Army soldiers were killed at Seelow Heights, and the staggering figure of 600,000 killed in Berlin seems more plausible. Konev complained at one point that he was losing 1,000 men a day because Zhukov's artillery failed to shift fire when asked. Zhukov denied that allegation, stating that Konev was not using his troops intelligently.

German losses at Seelow were also high, with 11,000 of the 18,000 troops positioned on the lower hill dying. The survivors would, for the most part, perish in Berlin, fighting without respite in a city destined to die.

Berlin

(Apr. 16 - May 2, 1945)

On April 11, 1945, the Ninth Army under Gen. Simpson was 24 hours from Berlin with no resistance in front and they were ordered not to cross the Elbe. Simpson wrote that he had seven divisions, two Army corps, in very good shape, with railroads bringing in supplies and hundreds of 10-ton truck companies, and two bridges across the river. He claimed there was no doubt that he could have taken Berlin easily 2 weeks before the Russians did. But FDR had given Berlin to Stalin at Yalta, it was only right that the Red Army have the satisfaction of having Berlin. Another problem that made this decision easy was the fact the Gen. Eisenhower estimated 100,000 casualties. And while American soldier's lives were important, no one cared about Russians dying in Berlin. It was already split up, the Allies would each get a part in Berlin.

Berlin was a stout place for a fight. It was large, modern and well-planned, which had allowed it to remain less damaged than other German cities, even though it had been heavily bombed. Still, by 1945, approximately 25 percent of Berlin had been destroyed by air raids, but its essential services had never been overwhelmed. Because of its sturdy construction, a great effort would be required to capture the capital city. And so the Russians prepared 161 Divisions plus 10 Polish divisions (2 million men).

The same factors that made Berlin so bomb-resistant also helped it resist ground attack. Throughout the city, large apartment buildings stood on strong, deep cellars. Wide boulevards and avenues at regular intervals served as firebreaks and would also serve as killing zones against Soviet tanks and infantry. Natural obstacles within the city made it even more defensible. The Spree River cut from the northwest part of the city through its center to the southeast. Berlin's southern approaches were guarded by the Teltow Canal. The center of the city, the heart of the capital, lay in a "V" surrounded by the Spree River and the Landwehr Canal.

Berlin was defended by the LVI Panzer Corps under Gen. Karl Weidling. At the start of the Soviet offensive, the LVI Panzer Corps was still not fully manned and consisted of only two divisions, the recently formed Muncheberg Division and the 20th SS Panzer Division, whose strength had been severely depleted during futile counterattacks at Kustrin. Eventually, the corps would consist of five divisions. When it fell back into Berlin, it lost contact with one division, so the last battle was fought with four divisions, as well as those forces already in the city--a total of 60,000 men and 50 to 60 tanks. This number is misleading since a majority of Berlin's defenders were civilians, old men and children (Hitler Youth).

The Soviet armies were well-trained and well-equipped. Their plan was to surround and capture the city on the sixth day of the offensive. By the 11th day, the Red Army was at the Elbe River. Contrary to the Soviet plan, Berlin did not surrender until May 2, a full 17 days after the offensive began.

While it is difficult to say exactly how many Soviet soldiers died in the assault on Berlin, a low estimate of 600,000 and a high of 1,000,000 is now agreed upon. The Berlin Medal was awarded to nearly 1,082,000 troops. Some 1,906,200 Russian troops fought in Berlin. By doing simple math 824,200 Russians did not get a medal, possibly because they were not alive to receive it. Since 600,000 deaths at Berlin is a low estimate and 1,000,000 a high one, 824,000 would be more reasonable. The Red Army also lost 1,997 tanks, 2,108 artillery pieces, and 912 aircraft. Thousands of Russians died when their own artillery rained down indiscriminantely on everyone. Gen. Konev complained at one point that he was losing 1,000 men a day because Gen. Zhukov's artillery failed to shift fire when asked. Gen. Zhukov denied that allegation, stating that Gen. Konev was not using his troops intelligently.

Pearl Harbor

(Dec. 7, 1941)

The surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, brought the United States into World War II more than two years after the conflict had flamed across Europe, Africa, and Asia. In the midst of Japanese-American negotiations to preserve the peace, Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, on Novemeber 26, 1941, led a fleet of six aircraft carriers with supporting battleships and cruisers out of the Kurile Islands toward Hawaii. Concealed by the fog and gales of the northern Pacific latitudes, Nagumo's fleet approached the target undetected. About 275 miles north of Hawaii, the Japanese carriers launched 360 bombers and fighters, on December 7.

The principal target, the great U.S. naval base of Pear Harbor on Oahu Island, lay open and unsuspecting on a quiet Sunday morning. At nearby airfields stood rows of aircraft arranged for training purposes, not combat. The first wave, of 183 aircraft, struck at 7:55 A.M., the second wave, of 170 planes, at 8:40. For two hours hostile planes blasted and raked the anchored Pacific Fleet of the United States. Five midget (two-man) submarines penetrated the harbor, but they did little damage and all were destroyed.

The attack, concentrated on the 8 battleships in the harbor, blew up the Arizona, capsized the Oklahoma, and sank the West Virginia and California at their moorings. The other 4 suffered damage, while 11 other vessels were sunk or crippled. The U.S. Pacific Fleet was disabled. In addition, 247 planes were destroyed or severely damaged, most of them on the ground. Military casualties were 2,330 killed and 1,145 wounded. The Japanese lost 28 planes. The U.S. military commanders in Hawaii, Adm. Husband Kimmel and Gen. Walter Short, were relieved from duty.

Imperial Admiral Yamamoto, who conceived, designed and promoted the Pearl Harbor attack, cautioned against a war with the United States. Having twice held naval attache positions within the Japanese embassy in the U. S. Capitol, he knew well the industrial strength, material wealth and temperament of the United States. Overruled by his superiors, he dedicated his efforts as Commander in Chief of the Imperial Combined Fleet to a successful attack. Upon completion of the attack he is quoted as saying "We have awakened a sleeping giant and have instilled in him a terrible resolve".

Midway

(June 4, 1942)

Japan's sweeping conquests in the Pacific early in 1942 brought the front line to Midway Island, 1,000 miles west of Hawaii. Late in May the Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto sent a diversionary naval force to the Aleutian Islands, while Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor, took a four-carrier striking force followed by an invasion fleet, a total of about 88 ships, to Midway. Anticipating such an attack, the U.S. Pacific commandant, Adm. Chester Nimitz, quickly assembled two task forces east of Midway, Number 16 commanded by Adm. Raymond Spruance and Number 18 directed by Adm. Frank Fletcher. The chief American strength lay in the large carriers Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown, plus aircraft based on Midway itself.

On June 3 U.S. Midway-based planes attacked part of the Japanese fleet more than 500 miles west of Midway. The blow was unsuccessful. The following morning 108 Japanese planes struck hard at Midway, inflicting much damage and destroying 15 of the 25 Marine fighters defending the island. Meanwhile 10 U.S. torpedo bombers struck at the Japanese fleet, the first of three successive attacks by planes from Midway. No hits were scored and 7 planes were shot down. In the second strike 8 of 27 Marine dive bombers were lost with again no damage inflicted. Finally 15 B-17 bombers attacked, and for the third time the enemy carriers escaped unhurt. American torpedo bombers from all three carriers then hit at the Japanese fleet. Little was accomplished and 35 of the 41 bombers were shot down. But this attack opened the way for a devastating assault by 54 dive bombers from the Eneterprise and Yorktown. Three of the heavy carriers, Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu, their decks loaded with aircraft about to take off, were sunk within five minutes, changing the whole course of the war. The fourth carrier, Hiryu, was destroyed in a second attack that afternoon. Before that, however, planes from the Hiryu had mortally wounded the Yorktown. Deprived of their precious carriers, the Japanese began withdrawing on June 5. The American forces were too weakened to pursue, but they did sink a heavy cruiser, the Mikuma, the following day. In the hard fought four day battle, the United States lost 150 planes, 307 men, and the destroyer Hammann, in addition to the Yorktown (finished off by a Japanese submarine on June 6). Japan lost 275 planes with much higher personnel casualties, about 4,800. The many pilots lost were irreplaceable.

The battle of Midway was the turning point in the Pacific Naval War. Together with the earlier Coral Sea battle, it ended six months of Japanese ascendancy and made possible a U.S. counter-offensive, beginning in the Solomon Islands two months later.

Guadalcanal

(Aug. 7, 1942 - Feb. 9, 1943)

The Japanese southward thrust through the Solomon Islands reached Guadalcanal in July 1942. Here work was begun on an airfield that would seriously threaten the Allied supply line to the Southwest Pacific. To block this advance, the U.S. 1st Marine Division under Gen. Alexander Vandergrift landed on August 7, 1942, on the north side of Guadalcanal, on Tulagi, and on two smaller islands nearby. Called Operation Cactus, it was the first Allied counter-offensive against Japan in World War II.

In 48 hours the first waves of the 16,000 Marine force secured all their objectives, including the still uncompleted airfield near Lunga Point. The air base was named Henderson Field in honor of a Marine major killed at the battle of Midway. But then the Japanese reacted savagely. Reinforcements poured into Guadalcanal, and strong naval units moved south to bombard U.S. shore positions and attack the Allied fleet that was seeking to protect the American garrison on the island. The result was one of the longest, bloodiest battles of the Pacific War.

While the Marines dug in a defensive perimeter (seven miles by four miles) around Henderson Field, elements of what would become the Japanese Seventeenth Army (Haruyoshi Hyakutake) organized a counterattack from the Tenaru River to the east. This thrust was beaten back at the Ilu River on August 20 and 21. By August 20 the first U.S. planes began using the airfield. Fresh landings then doubled the enemy strength to about 6,000. Between September 12 and 14, the reinforced Japanese smashed at the American perimeter, particularly the Lunga River, Bloody Ridge area to the east and south. Again the Marines held, but their beachhead stood in grave danger. Japanese warships bombarded the American position and bombers blasted it from the air. The steaming climate, tropical diseases, and relentless jungle warfare took a heavy toll. But perhaps most important of all was the knowledge that despite all the land fighting in the struggle would ultimately turn on which side established the air and sea supremacy necessary to win the battle of reinforcements.

On September 18 the 2nd Marine Division and, later, Army Americal Division began to come ashore. At the same time, however, Japanese troop strength increased so much faster that the 36,000 Japanese on the island now outnumbered the embattled Americans. A Marine attack on the Matanikau River, to the west, on September 27 was defeated with a loss of 60 killed and 100 wounded. The persistent enemy attempts to recapture Henderson Field turned the nights of October and Novemeber into a deadly series of hand-to-hand struggles. But each time the defenders held their ground, inflicting casualties as high as 10 to 1. Meanwhile Adm. William Halsey, now in command in the South Pacific, vigorously countered the Japanese air and sea attacks. Finally, on November 15, following the decisive naval battle of Guadalcanal, the enemy went over to the defensive and made no further landings on Guadalcanal. The initiative then passed to the United States. In savage, close-range fighting the Americans gradually pushed back the Japanese. On December 9 command on Guadalcanal passed to the army's Gen. Alexander Patch, the hard-fighting 1st Marine Division was relieved. With the arrival of the 25th Infantry Division, the U.S. XIV Corps was organized on the island, on January 2, 1943. The almost 50,000 U.S. troops on Guadalcanal now ensured a U.S. victory.

On the nights of February 7-9, swift Japanese destroyers evacuated about 12,000 of their troops from Cape Esperance at the northwest tip of the island. Left behind were 23,000 killed (9,000 from disease or starvation), and 1,000 captured. United States ground forces lost 1,600 killed and 4,200 wounded. Nine Marines won the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal. The conquest of Guadalcanal marked the first rollback of Japan's grip on the Pacific islands.

Iwo Jima

(Feb. 19 - Mar. 26, 1945)

The frequent bombing runs of U.S. B-29 Superfortresses between the Marianas and Japan focused attention on the tiny volcanic island of Iwo Jima lying only 700 miles south of Tokyo. Iwo-based Japanese radar and fighters plagued the U.S. 20th Air Force. The capture of Iwo would eliminate this menace and provide fighter protection for heavy bombers over the Japanese homeland. In addition, the island could serve as a convenient emergency landing strip for crippled or fuelless B-29's on their, 1,500-mile flight back to Saipan and Tinian.

Japan also appreciated the importance of Iwo Jima. In the eight sqaure miles of the sulfurous island Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi packed 21,000 troops and the heaviest firepower and strongest defenses of the Pacific War, 1,500 fortified caves, hundreds of ferroconcrete pillboxes, blockhouses, and trenches, and miles of interconnecting tunnels. He was quoted as saying "1 million Americans in 1,000 years could not take the island." To attack this formidable array, the Marine Gen. Harry Schmidt's V Amphibious Corps readied the 4th and 5th Marine divisions for an assault on the southeast beaches.

On February 19, after weeks of intensive aerial bombardment and three days of naval shelling, the invasion took place. On the left (south) the 5th Marine Division (Keller Rockey) fought its was across Iwo Jima's narrow neck the first day, isolating the Mount Suribachi defenses on the southern tip of the island. On the right the 4th Marine Division (Clifton Gates) reached the edge of Airfield Number One, nailing down the north flank of the landing beach. But a constant hail of Japanese artillery and small arms fire took a frightful toll that first day, more than 2,400 Marines had been hit, including some 600 killed.

On the second day the 5th Marine Division turned left and attacked toward Suribachi. Despite continued stiff resistance, this division pressed forward until, on February 23, the assault carried to the top of Suribachi's 550-foot peak. Here at 10:30 A.M. a small American flag was raised on a pipe by Lt. Harold Schrier's patrol. At 2:30 P.M. the mountain slopes were clear and a larger flag was raised on the top. The photograph of the event, taken by Joe Rosenthal, soon became the most dramatic battle picture in American history.

To the north, the 4th Marine Division had taken Airfield Number One and wheeled right up the east coast. Now the 5th Marine Division turned 180 degrees from Mount Suribachi and attacked up the west coast. Between these two units, the reserve 3rd Marine Division (Graves Erskine) occupied the center of the advance through Airfield Number Two on February 24. In this northern half of Iwo Jima the Japanese fanatically held on to cross cross-island defense lines keyed on the Motoyama Plateau. On March 9 the 3rd Marine Division reached the sea in the northeast. A week later the 4th Marine Division had crushed all resistance on the right (east) flank. It was not until March 26, however, that the 5th Marine Division could report all opposition eliminated on the left.

The battle of Iwo Jima cost the Marine Corps more than 6,821 dead and over 18,000 wounded. Twenty-six men won the Medal of Honor (12 of them posthumously) on the island where, Adm. Nimitz said "uncommon valor was a common virtue." Almost every Japanese defender had been killed. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers only 212 were captured, the rest were all killed. Of the 212 prisoners, all but 1 were Korean workers hired to reinforce the island. Only one Japanese soldier was captured because he was knocked unconcious by a grenade, otherwise he probably would have commited suicide like many others refusing to surrender. But the conquest began paying dividends even before the fighting ended. On March 4 the first fuelless B-29 landed on Airfield Number One on its way back to the Marianas. It was the first of 2,251 Superfortresses, carrying 24,761 crewmen to make use of Iwo Jima's emergency landing fields.

Okinawa

(Apr. 1 - July 2, 1945)

The last and greatest land battle of the Pacific War took place on Okinawa, a 794-square mile island lying less than 400 miles below southern Kyushu. This largest island in the Ryukyu chain formed the last steppingstone to Japan in the long U.S. advance across the Central and Southwest Pacific. From here was to come the planned invasion of Japan's home islands, Kyushu in Novemebr 1945, Honshu in March 1946 (an attack negated by the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945).

To defend Okinawa against the onrushing Americans, Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima deployed more than 100,000 troops of the Thirty-Second Army, the great majority of them dug in behind the Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru Line across the southern one-fifth of the island. The Japanese planned to fight to the death behind this line, giving their kamikaze suicide pilots time to destroy Adm. Raymond Spruance's Fifth Fleet protecting the invasion.

Under the overall command of Adm. Chester Nimitz, the amphibious attack forces were brought to Okinawa under Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner. The assault was assigned to the newly organized Tenth Army, commanded by Gen. Simon Buckner, Jr., veteran of the Aleutian counteroffensive in 1943. On March 26 the 77th Infantry Division (Andrew Bruce) seized the Kerama and Keise Islands, off the southwestern coast of Okinawa. The invasion itself would come six days later on the Hagushi beaches of western Okinawa, ten miles above the main Japanese defense line. Here Marine Gen. Roy Geiger's III Amphibious Corps would make up the north wing of the assault, 6th Marine Division (Lemuel Shepherd) on the left, 1st Marine Division (Pedro del Valle) on the right, and 2nd Marine Division (Thomas Watson) feinting a landing on the southern tip of the island. The Tenth Army's south (right) wing consisted of Gen. John Hodge's XXIV Corps, the 7th Infantry (Archibald Arnold) and 96th Infantry (James Bradley) divisions, left to right.

On April 1 Buckner's army hit the beaches and moved quickly inland against only light opposition. By nightfall 50,000 troops occupied a beachhead eight miles long and four miles deep. Two days later the 1st Marine Division had consolidated a corridor to the east coast across Okinawa's two and a half mile waist. To their left, the 6th Marine Division had swung north, sweeping up both coasts. On April 8 the 6th reached the rugged Motobu Peninsula, jutting westward into the East China Sea. It took 12 days to clear this strong center of resistance. But by Aril 20 the northern fourth fifths of Okinawa's 65-mile length was secure.

During the conquest of the Motobu Peninsula, the offshore island of Ie Shima was invaded by the 77th Infantry Division on April 16. In a savage four day struggle the soldiers captured the island, killing some 4,700 Japanese. United States losses were 258 dead and 879 wounded.

Meanwhile, on the southern end of the island, XXIV Corps found much harder going. After moving eastward across the width of Okinawa in the first two days, the infantrymen turned 90 degrees to the south, 7th on the left flank, 96th on the right. By April 8 Japanese resistance had greatly increased, and three days later the XXIV Corps was stopped by the outerworks of the Naha-Shuri-Yonabaru Line. Hodge then sent the 27th Infantry Division (George Griner) in on the west coast to the right of the 96th. On April 19, XXIV Corps launched a major assault, three divisions abreast, on a five mile front. But in 12 days of vicious, see-saw fighting less than two miles were gained. The III Amphibious Corps was then ordered into line to form the right wing, 6th Marine Division on the west coast, the 1st inland. On the left flank, the 7th retained its position on the east coast, the 77th moved in on its right to relieve the battered 27th and 96th divisions.

On May 4 and 5 Ushijima sent a heavy counterattack against the Tenth Army's left flank. The effort was disastrous for the Japanese, who had to leave their strong entrenchments and fight in the open, 6,227 were killed. The XXIV Corps suffered 714 casualties. Six days later Buckner resumed the offensive despite drenching spring rains. In grim, grueling warfare, both U.S. corps fought into and through Japanese defense lines. On May 23 the 6th Marine Division stormed into Naha to turn the enemy's west flank. The 1st Marine Division in the center took Shuri Castle on May 29. On the right the XXIV Corps punched relentlessly southward, outflanking the line on the east.

On June 4 the 6th Marine Division made a shore-to-shore amphibious assault on Oroku Peninsula, in the southwest. The peninsula was conquered in ten days of savage fighting, while the 8th Regiment (Col. Clarence Wallace) of the 2nd Marine Division joined the main thrust to the southern tip of Okinawa. During this last, bitter advance Buckner was killed by enemy artillery, on June 18, and replaced by Geiger of the marines. Three days later, on June 21, the Tenth Army reached the southern coast and then turned back to mop up remaining pockets of resistance. The land battle officially ended on July 2.

The Japanese Thirty-Second Army was wiped out, more than 100,000 killed and 10,000 captured. United States casualties were also heavy, 2,938 Marines dead or missing and 13,708 wounded, 4,675 army dead or missing and 18,099 wounded.

At sea and in the air the battle was as vicious as on the ground. On April 7 the world's mightiest battleship, the Yamato, steaming south toward the fray, was sunk by U.S. carrier planes in the East China Sea. Also destroyed were a Japanese light cruiser and four destroyers. Before the battle of Okinawa ended, another 9 Japanese ships were sunk. The Japanese Navy was virtually extinct. Japanese aircraft assaulted the Tenth Army and its offshore shipping throughout the land battle. Bombers did little damage, but in some 1,900 kamikazes dived through air defenses to sink 36 U.S. ships and damage another 368. These attacks killed 4,907 navy men and wounded another 4,824. But during the three month battle some 7,800 Japanese planes were destroyed, at a cost of 763 U.S. aircraft. Japanese air power had become a shadow.

From Okinawa the Allies now prepared for the projected invasion of Japan. Gen. Joseph Stilwell took over the Tenth Army, which, with the First Army (redeployed from Europe) came under the overall command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Adm. Nimitz continued in control of all naval units. But the ground assault on Japan became unnecessary when the U.S. aerial bombardment forced the Japanese government to accept unconditional surrender six weeks after the battle of Okinawa ended.

Manchuria

(Aug. 9 - 17, 1945)

The war in the Pacific was fought mostly by American troops as well as British forces. The Soviet Union was asked to get involved and Stalin agreed that after the war in Europe would end he would declare war on Japan. Three months after the Nazis were defeated, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, two days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On August 9 a second bomb was dropped, at the same time the Red Army invaded Manchuria where Japanese troops were stationed.

Marshal Alexandr Vasilevski, Commander in Chief of Soviet Forces in the Far East, led an offensive with 76 divisions (1,700,000 men), 5,600 tanks, 28,000 artillery pieces, and 4,400 aircraft. Facing the Red Army was the Kwantung Army Group under Gen. Yamada Otozo. The Kwantung Army was an occupation force and far from being fit for battle. At this time the Japanese homeland was being prepared for an American invasion. Over 2,500,000 troops were ready but they lacked heavy weapons, particularly machine guns and armor. The problem was solved, since the Kwantung Army faced little Chinese opposition, they were stripped of most of its armor, about 50%.

Gen. Otozo faced an uphil battle from the get go. The Japanese were fierce jungle guerrilas, they were not used to fighting in the open. The Kwantung Army was some 700,000 strong, but they were still outnumbered over two to one. Most importantly the Japanese had no heavy tanks. They did possess some 800 light tanks, 5,000 small guns, and 1,800 aircraft.

The battle was as one sided as the forces on the field. Japanese soldiers who fought to the death for every inch of land in the Pacific islands, surrendered in large numbers. There were 84,000 Japanese soldiers killed, wounded, and missing. The Russians suffered 12,031 soldiers killed, 24,425 wounded, 78 tanks lost, 232 artillery pieces lost, and 62 aircraft lost. On August 14, 1945, the Japanese surrendered to the United States. The Soviet Union received some islands for its small contribution, the Kuril and Sakhalin islands.

VIII.Pictures

Map of Europe	U.S. troops at Iwo Jima	Normandy Invasion	Pearl Harbor attack	Reamagen, the only bridge intact over the Rhine captured by the Allies
Crossing into Germany	Paratroopers in actions	Allies in France	Paris welcomes the Allied liberation	Germans surrendering in Italy

Battle of Midway	Battle of Midway	U.S. troops with a flamethrower	Dead Japanese soldiers	Dead Japanese soldiers
U.S. troops on the attack	Battle of Midway	Midway airplanes attacking	Japanese Official surrender on USS Missiouri	News of Japanese capitulation, Madison Square Garden, New York

Sources Used